


Pack Dynamics

by for-your-eyes-only (Drakkan)



Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: Background Poly, Extended Universe, F/M, Mention of torture, mention of murder, mention of rape
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2015-06-02
Packaged: 2018-03-18 05:23:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3557624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drakkan/pseuds/for-your-eyes-only
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jupiter isn't sure just what it is that Caine needs, but she's determined to find out - from asking all the wrong questions to learning what it really means to be a lycantant without a pack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Complications

There is was again. That _look_. It was just a flash, passing over Caine’s face so quickly she wanted to question if she actually was seeing it, but it had been happening for months now, more and more frequently. Jupiter scrunched up her nose at him. It was not great to get that look when she was kissing him, when she wanted to run her hands up his back and through those dark brown hawk-feathers and feel his hips canting against her— His eyes tightened again, and she felt herself frown.

“What is _up_ with you?” she asked. He blinked at her, brow furrowing.

“Your majesty?” Jupiter pursed her lips. She really liked hearing him call her that, his low, throaty voice almost growling the words. He meant them, in a way nobody else did. It was weird hearing it from other people, like they were talking to someone else while looking at her. Caine _meant_ it, even when he had no idea what she was talking about. Like now.

“You know.” She gestured. “The face… thing… you’re doing. You get all squinty and tense for a second.” Caine looked at her like she was speaking another language. Jupiter made the face for him.

“If your majesty says so,” he said, doubtfully.

“Do I smell like toilets or something?” Jupiter pressed. “I thought dogs liked the smell of toilets.” It was a lame excuse of a joke, and it fell very, very flat. Caine opened his mouth like he was going to say something, looking almost pained, and closed it again. Jupiter knew she was making the _oh-my-god-did-I-really-say-that_ face again, and couldn’t help it.

“You smell very nice, Jupiter,” he said at last, “And not at all like toilets.”

Ͼ

She was still stewing over it when she got home, offering only the barest of courtesies to her family before retreating to the basement. With a sigh that was half groan, Jupiter heaved herself down onto her bed, collapsing in a funk that had everything to do with her perfect, complicated, wonderful, _horrible_ angel-wolf-boyfriend. There was something missing – she knew there was. Something that he needed, something that _she_ needed, but she had no idea what it was, and Caine wasn’t exactly the most forthcoming when it came to things like feelings and desires.

_“Caine’s complicated,”_ Stinger had told her once, when she had been struck by the sudden change in his behavior that first day, from thoughtful and protective to strained and detached. Jupiter sighed again, looking at her collage of planets and pretty actors without really seeing it, instead running through her mind their latest date. It was like Caine was waiting for her to do… _something_ , only he had no idea what it was and she had no idea what it was. Asking him had been a disaster. Queen Jupiter strikes again! Sometimes she couldn’t believe the words that came out of her mouth. Words she said with her real, out-loud voice. To Caine. Even the recollection was mortifying.

Trying to shake her self-embarrassment, Jupiter rolled over and pulled her tablet out from under her pillow. Using Earth-tech had been something she’s absolutely put her foot down on; she wasn’t sure still when – or if – she’d tell her family about the weird and kind of terrible world she’d been launched into, but she was pretty sure that _“Why do you have holographic alien tech, Jupiter”_ was not the introduction she wanted. There were more messages than she really wanted to deal with; it turned out that being queen of Earth was, well, _work._

Getting a seneschal had helped – a _lot_. Despite her initial dislike of the rat splice, Chicanery Night had been Balem’s right hand for some time, and she was growing almost fond of him. And for all that the idea of owning people freaked her out, purchasing the bonds for a couple android space lawyers to manage the outrageous space bureaucracy had been one of Mr. Night’s better ideas. At least she didn’t have to spend a lot of time dealing with the tax injunctions that had been filed on her behalf against Titus, or the hellishly complex proceedings of the investigation into Balem’s crimes and death, and the ensuing inheritance disputes.

Most of the emails were reports on various proceedings, and Jupiter read through them dutifully, though her mind was decidedly _not_ on tax disputes. She kept circling back to that fleeting expression on Caine’s face: the caged look of confusion in those gold-flecked green eyes, the way his jaw tensed for a moment before he smiled, his eyebrows pulling together just for a flash, the tension in the corner of his eyes that seemed to never go away. She might have thought she’d _imagined_ it, but she’d seen that expression flash so many times over the past few months that Jupiter knew it had to be real.

Jupiter rolled back over onto her back, resting the tablet on her chest and staring at the ceiling. There was a crack shaped almost like the Abrasax sigil, and Jupiter traced it over and over with her eyes. She’d spent so much time already trying to learn about space culture, trying to bridge the divide between her and Caine (and Stinger and Kiza and… but really it was for Caine, and always had been).

It was frustrating how little she knew. Sometimes the cultural differences were silly and charming, like watching Caine’s face light up with pure delight the first time she fed him apple pie, or when Caine gravely informed her that he would stand guard while she used the public restrooms at the movie theater. Sometimes… less so. So far they hadn’t run into anything so deeply dividing that it didn’t seem it could be bridged, but internally Jupiter railed at the world that had left Caine thinking he was so much more _less than_ in so many ways.

It was more than culture, though, and Jupiter knew it. She was still having just a little trouble grasping just how inhuman Caine really was. It was all fine to say “genomgeneered human” or to remember that he was spliced with a wolf, and rather different to try and wrap her mind around exactly how he saw the world. Even watching Nat Geo specials on wolves was not exactly helpful. After all, she had no idea exactly how… wolfy… he really was. (Did he have a prey drive? Were squirrels totally irresistible? Did he like to howl? Did he piss on his apartment to claim it? She almost didn’t want to know, and she definitely was not going to ask.)

What she really needed was some sort of documentary on lycantants. Maybe one existed? She lifted up her tablet and started scrolling through the messages again, until she got to her last email to Stinger. As useful as Chicanery Night was proving, Jupiter wasn’t particularly comfortable asking him questions that pertained to Caine. The two, while not precisely adversaries, were really not that fond of each other. She started typing a quick request for some sort of documentary on lycantants, then paused, grimaced, and deleted it. It just sounded way too weird and clinical, and as much as she wanted to figure out Caine, Jupiter didn’t want to be a freak about it.

She had to go out to the farmhouse on Monday anyway, for the formal transfer of defense from Captain Tsing and the Aegis to the honor guard assigned by the Legion. Stinger wanted to talk protocol with her, and discuss again the idea of hiring her own guard forces. _What the hell_ , she thought. _Maybe I’ll get lucky and he’ll know, like, a lycantant splicer or something._ Feeling a bit better now that she had a plan of action, Jupiter turned her tablet off and stretched. She’d deal with it on Monday.

Ͼ

The drive out to Stinger’s place had become something of a soothing routine. Every couple of weeks, something would require the presence of Her Majesty Jupiter Jones, and she and Caine would head out of Chicago through the endless fields of corn and soybeans, heading for a house as much a hive as a home. It was autumn now, and the corn had been reduced to stubble and pheasants, but the weather was still surprisingly pleasant.

Caine had acquired a fondness for funk, and the two of them listened their way through the new D’Angelo album twice before Jupiter finally turned down the music. He looked over at her with his eyebrows raised. His eyeliner was on point today, perfectly outlining his deep-set eyes. Jupiter had never expected to fall for a guy who wore makeup on the daily, but like so many things about Caine, it really worked for her. She smiled up at him, and reached over to scratch the back of his neck.

He hummed in pleasure, deep in the back of his throat, and turned his eyes back to the road. Jupiter watched him drive, feeling that familiar flush of warmth. It was hard, sometimes, to remember that they’d only met a few months ago and that he was literally a wolf-man from outer space. It was just so good to be here, with him next to her, his neck against the palm of her hand. Not for the first time, she admitted to herself that she was head-over-heels for this man. He glanced over at her again, before turning them onto the gravel road that led to Stinger’s house. She opened her mouth to tell him, forming the words _I love you_ on her tongue.

“When do you head back out?” came out instead. Was it her imagination, or could she feel his shoulders tense, see his ears pull back as his jaw clenched, just for a second? Jupiter felt her chest tighten. Whatever this was, whatever was wrong between them, this had to be fixed. There had to be a fix for it, because the alternative – saying goodbye to Caine, forever – made her so heartsick that she could barely contemplate it. Caine shrugged, and she pulled her hand back, folding them in her lap as they jounced along the road.

“Tonight, maybe,” he said, his voice even, as if it was a matter of no importance. “Stinger said it would probably be easiest for me to leave from his place.” He didn’t look at her.

“Oh,” she said, cursing herself inwardly for being such a coward. They were silent for a few minutes, while he took them to Stinger’s house. The meadows around the farmhouse were in bloom with the last flowers of the year, goldenrods and other forms of pollen death. Jupiter felt her sinuses twinge even before they got out of the car, and popped an Aleve with a sense of resignation. That was just her luck.

Ͼ

“What exactly are you looking for, majesty?” Stinger asked, leaning across the table, a mug of tea in his hands. Jupiter looked down at her own tea, as if it might give up the answer. She’d long since given up trying to get Stinger to call her by her own name. At least Kiza did, sometimes.

“I don’t really know,” she said at last. “Just…” she looked back up at Stinger. “You told me Caine was complicated, once, that it came from being a lycantant without a pack.” She took a sip of the tea – black as sin and just about oversteeped – and set it down again. It was a little easier to talk about this now that Caine was gone, but she still felt empty, almost scooped out. Long-distance sucked, and saying goodbye was really not easy. Even though she knew he was coming back in two weeks, even though she still wore his promises on her lips.

“He’s just… it’s like he’s waiting for me to do something, and I keep missing the moment.” She shook her head. “And every time I don’t do the thing – whatever that thing is – he’s, I don’t know, disappointed? Hurt’s not the right word. I don’t even know if _he_ knows what he wants me to do!” The words just tumbled out of her, frustration heavy on her tongue, but Stinger just watched her with the same measured look he’d always given her. “I just thought, maybe if I knew more about lycantants, I might be able to figure it out?”

Stinger regarded her for another moment, all serious bee dad business. Jupiter met him stare for stare for a moment, before dropping her gaze back to her tea. Submission posture for a wolf, according to the internet, but then, Stinger was part bee, as far as she could tell. Caine never tried to stare her down; he was always the first to look away, or duck his chin down, glancing at her feet before meeting her eyes again. After a few seconds, Stinger stood up and walked over to his pile of tech in the adjoining room. Jupiter watched him go.

“I don’t know that seeing a splicer would help,” he said, sorting through sheaves and blowing dust off of a variety of objects, only to chuck them into another pile. It didn’t seem like the best storage method, but hey, not her house, not her rules. At least she didn’t have to clean up after him. “They usually focus on genetics, not training. Most have training facilities, unh,” he grunted, digging through a pile under a table, “but the splicers don’t really oversee them much. Aha!” He stood with a sheave and an expression of victory. “Knew I still had this old thing.”

“Training manual for integrating skyjacker units,” he said in response to her sound of query, coming back to the table and sliding it to her. Stinger took a seat and a swig of tea while Jupiter tried to get the sheave to turn on. “There’s a short bit on dealing with lycantants. Might be helpful.”

“What if it’s not enough?” Jupiter asked after another few moments of frustration. She’d get Kiza to show her how to turn the damn thing on tomorrow, before she headed back to Chicago. Stinger was pretty tolerant of her tersie antics, but Jupiter didn’t like looking like more incompetent than she strictly had to. “I mean, you told me that the few lycantants in the skyjackers are all loners.” She tapped the sheave on the table. “ _And_ you told me that Caine regards me as his pack. But what if there’s more to it? I mean, even though you and he were in the skyjackers together for so long…” She stopped, and made a face when Stinger nodded at her to continue.

“I don’t want to downplay your guys’ relationship. I mean, you sacrificed your wings for his life. That’s a big deal. But,” Jupiter looked away. “But you weren’t ever pack to him, right?” She glanced back, trying not to cringe. She hoped she wasn’t coming off as conceited, like being Caine’s pack made her more important than him. Stinger sighed. She could hear him rustling his wings, something Caine always did when he was a little uncomfortable.

“No, you’re right, majesty. All I know is that lycantants usually form packs early. They call it ‘finding tain,’ and don’t really talk about it more.” Jupiter looked back over at him. He was shaking his head, hands gripping his mug of tea so hard his knuckles were turning white. Without thinking, Jupiter reached over and covered his hands with hers.

“I’m sorry – if it’s too personal – ” Stinger shook his head again and looked up at her. Feeling suddenly as if the contact was too intimate, Jupiter took her hands back. He flexed his fingers, but relaxed.

“I tried hard to get Caine to view us as, well, pack, your majesty. But as far as I know, it’s not something you can force.” He looked away, into the past, and the harsh lines of his face softened, just slightly. “You’ve seen Caine with us, with me and Kiza. We know each other well enough as we have our own ruts.” Stinger looked back into Jupiter’s eyes, and this time, she didn’t look away. “I love Caine like my own son, your majesty,” he said, voice grave and low. “He’s an ass and the best soldier I ever served with, and he looks at you like flowers look at the sun. I’ll see if I can pull some favors, get you in touch with a lycantant pack.”

Jupiter nodded, slowly. “Thank you, Stinger.” The man held her gaze for a breath, looked away, looked back.

“You’re the best thing that ever happened to him, your majesty.” The rest of the words were unspoken, but she could hear them hanging between them: _Don’t fuck it up._


	2. Dancing

“I’m off, мама!” Jupiter was halfway out the door already, duffel bag slung over her shoulder. Vladie said something rude, and she flipped the bird at him with a roll of her eyes just as Aleksa came upstairs.

“Jupiter!” The maternal outrage was laid on hard, but Jupiter only laughed and shook her head, turning around to kiss her mother on the cheek.

“Vladie knows I don’t mean it,” she said, smiling. Aleksa sighed and clucked her tongue. She looked tired, her silvering brown hair escaping its severe bun to frame her face in a halo of flyaways. Less tired, it seemed, now that Jupiter had “taken a job” out in the country, as a “live-in maid,” and could send them some money without suspicion. It was a simpler explanation than the real one – that being queen of Earth was eating up more and more time, between dealing with the extensive litigation spawning from the first encounters with Seraphi’s children, and dealing with everything _else_ that sprang naturally from owning a planet. Weekends with family, and the weeks at Stinger’s – well, Kiza’s place, now – it was a workable compromise.

The car in front of the house beeped at her, and Jupiter sighed and shrugged. “Duty calls, мама. Love you, see you Saturday?” Her mother smiled and kissed Jupiter on the cheek.

“моя планета,” she said, her voice full of all the love a mother could hold. “Until Saturday, Jupiter.” They embraced, Jupiter holding tight to her mother for one heartbeat, two, before letting go and smiling again. She gave Aleksa another kiss on the cheek, a brief peck, before bounding down the stairs of the little house full of family and sliding into the front seat of the car. A sleek black affair, the thing reeked of money and lent credence to the whole Jupiter-works-as-a-maid-for-some-filthy-rich-people. She hated lying to her family, but worse – so much worse – would be trying to convince them that she wasn’t insane or in incredible danger. Particularly because she _was_ , and probably always would be, in danger. There was no need to expose her family to that sort of danger, not when she could keep them safe from afar.

She waved out the window as the car pulled away, then gusted a sigh and slumped back in her seat, staring at the ceiling. _Off to the bees_ , she thought, and grinned. If there was one thing she really enjoyed about being a space queen (aside from, say, Caine, or the fact that she could literally buy whatever she wanted, or the incredible vacation destinations… well, maybe there was a lot to like about being a space queen), it was dancing with Kiza’s bees.

“Is your majesty alright?” the driver asked, diffident. Jupiter glanced over at him, and tried to offer a compelling smile. He was one of her Legion honor guard, a group of thirty-six men and women that had been tasked to defend her at all times. Apparently driver duty was included, for which Jupiter was thankful. She wasn’t even sure how to go about hiring a chauffeur.

“Yeah, just not used to saying goodbye, I guess,” she replied. “Remind me of your name, please? Sorry,” she added, reflex more than anything, “There’s just so many of you guys, and you’re usually all disguised and stuff.” Jupiter wrinkled her nose as the legionnaire tried not to smile. “Plus, I’m really bad at names.” The man’s lips twitched, not a smile, but definitely not _not_ a smile. He looked like he was in his late thirties, with short-cropped black hair that curled tightly against his scalp, and when he spoke his teeth flashed white against his red-brown skin. Unlike many of the splices assigned to her, he wore a shirt without a collar, baring his splicer’s mark. It was one of the simplest ones she’d seen so far: just the requisite rectangle with three dots in a horizontal line.

“Mick Formis, majesty,” he said at last, glancing over at her. His eyes were clear and kind, with laugh lines and long lashes. “I could wear a name tag, if it would please her majesty.” Jupiter giggled. She’d put long hours in these past three weeks, trying to get her legionnaires to lighten up, even a little. It seemed that it had stuck, at least a little bit.

“Thanks, but no thanks, Mick Formis,” she said, feeling a little more at ease. “I’m gonna learn everyone’s names. It might take me a while, but I’m _totally_ gonna do it.” The legionnaire smiled this time, broad and easy, and Jupiter relaxed even more. It was weird, trying to settle into this life, but Jupiter would be damned if she wasn’t going to treat the people around her like people. She’d spent too long scrubbing people’s shitstains out of toilets and being treated like it made her less than human to ever, _ever_ forget to look at the people who served her, in turn.

Ͼ

Kiza was in the yard when they pulled up, carefully slicing thick pieces of honeycomb out of one of the hive boxes, looking very adept in her beekeeper’s outfit, smoke drifting up next to her. Jupiter leaned out of the window (much to the consternation of Mr. Formis) and cupped her hands around her mouth to yell.

“Kiza! Need some help?” The young woman looked up, wiggled her fingers in an approximation of a wave.

“No thanks, your majesty!” she called back. “I’m almost done as it is.” Jupiter ducked back into the car before her bodyguard could yank her back in, and flashed him a cheekish smile. The corners of his mouth twitched upwards once, but he did reasonably well at appearing stern and concerned. Jupiter gave him a B+, for the effort, and sent up a silent thanks to Stinger, for making sure that she didn’t get stuck with a group of Serious People for the foreseeable future. Competent, she wanted. But the bowing and scraping and terrifying perfect obedience that appeared to be the standard for splice-Entitled interactions, yeah, no. Jupiter wanted none of _that_.

By the time Jupiter had gotten settled in the guest bedroom – her bedroom, now, really, complete with a poster of her namesake, some family photos, and a few candid snapshots she’d managed to take of Caine with her phone, all tacked up on the wall – Kiza had wrapped up outside and moved into the kitchen to strain and jar her harvest. Jupiter walked up to the doorway and did a pull-up on the bar set in the frame. Not even looking at her, Kiza laughed, moving with total precision as she worked with her honey. A few bees droned around the room; fewer than had lived in the house before, now that the Apinis had enough money to build hives for all the bees. That, and the judicious application of keepers and nanobot swarms (courtesy of Jupiter), had turned the ramshackle farmhouse into a quite comfortable home, with rather less rotting timber and peeling lead paint.

“Want to try a spoonful?” Kiza asked, as Jupiter dropped back to the floor. “It’s pretty good. The last harvest of the season. The bees are getting ready for the cold.”

“Sure!” Jupiter walked over, and Kiza popped a spoon in her mouth. It _was_ good honey – clear, sweet, and without the back-of-the-throat tang Jupiter always associated with the honey they bought at the store. Kiza smiled, eyes flashing gold, and Jupiter bit down on the spoon before she could take it back. “I’s mine, now,” she said around the utensil. Kiza laughed again, as light and clear as her honey. It was a good sound, a sound that belonged in this house, with bees and honey and sunlight as bright and golden as both.

“Don’t eat too much, majesty,” Kiza scolded, grinning, as she screwed the lid onto a jar filled with honey and comb. “You’ll spoil supper.” Jupiter raised a brow and retreated to the kitchen table to lick her prize clean.

“Yeah? What’s for supper?” Dinner at the Apini’s was usually a simple affair: pasta and red sauce, or frozen pizza popped in the oven. Unlike their charges, Kiza and Stinger ate rather more than nectar (though both had a sweet tooth), a trait for which Jupiter was happy.

“Your majesty! Didn’t you get the message?” Kiza had turned back to her honey, but her amusement was obvious, and Jupiter sheepishly pulled out her phone to scroll through the new messages. There were thirty-nine unread messages, and Her Majesty made a very un-royal face.

“Her majesty was busy building lego castles with her cousin,” Jupiter admitted. “Can you just tell me, or do I actually have to read through all these interminable messages from Mr. Night et al.?” Kiza’s shoulders shook with silent laughter, and she made the little _bzzt!_ noise of amusement that Jupiter loved to startle out of her (and Stinger, though that was a bit harder to do).

“Her majesty has a very special visitor!” Kiza said, arch, and wiggled her butt in a little victory dance. Jupiter felt her pulse accelerate, and without thinking reached up to smooth her hair.

“Caine? Caine’s back early?” Once she might have hated that eagerness in her voice, the butterflies that sprung up all unwanted to make her chest ache, but this was Caine, god, _Caine_ , she missed him so much, and he wasn’t due back for another two weeks at the earliest. But he’d said – he’d said he might be able to get back early, that they might track down their target faster than expected—Kiza had turned around, and was shaking her head, eyes soft and abashed.

“Oh, Jupiter, no, I’m sorry,” she said, the words flooding out. “We haven’t heard anything from Caine’s unit yet. They’re still in the black. I’m sure he’s fine, I’m sure there’s nothing wrong—” Jupiter made herself smile for Kiza, to cut off the rush of apologies.

“No, of course,” she said, trying not to look like she was crushed. Stupid, _stupid_ , of course it wasn’t Caine. Even if he’d wanted to surprise her with an early return, complete with fancy dinner, her guards were on standing orders to tell Jupiter if either Caine or Stinger were in the _galaxy_ , let alone making planetfall on Earth. She’d spent more than two hours in a car with one of her legionnaires, and this was obviously old news. Jupiter offered Kiza another smile. She looked uncertain, familiar enough with Jupiter to know that she was faking it, but still hung up on protocol enough not to call her on it. “I just got a little over-eager. I miss him, you know?”

Kiza smiled back, a bit hesitant, but accepting Jupiter’s excuse. “I know what you mean,” she said, smoothing one of her labels on a jar of honey. “It’s hard, not having dad around, after we spent twelve years in this house together.” She set the last jar down, slid her equipment into the sink, and took a seat across from Jupiter. Her eyes searched out Jupiter’s: hexagonal hazel to human brown, two women missing the most important people in their lives. Kiza reached over and took one of Jupiter’s hands in her own. “They really are okay, Jupe.” That got Jupiter to smile, real this time. It was an uphill campaign, to get anyone to call her by her name, let alone to refer to her by her nickname.

“I know,” Jupiter said, giving Kiza’s hand a squeeze. “And Stinger will be back, what, in two months?”

“More or less,” Kiza replied, with a half shrug. Her eyes flashed again, and she rested her chin on her hand. “It’s hard to tell with skyjacker assignments. Dad’s stuck in a border dispute off in the deeps. They’re just on call, but if it comes to a run-off, they might be out there a while. At least, that’s what he said.” She shrugged again. “They asked me to join up again, but then, who’d tend the bees?” Kiza wriggled her shoulders a bit, raising her brows at Jupiter. “They dance for you, but I think I still know them a bit better, no?” Jupiter giggled and tossed her hair back.

“Only because you’re half a bee yourself!” Kiza grinned, gave Jupiter’s hand a little shake, and got up.

“And don’t you forget it, majesty,” she said with a smirk. Jupiter made a face at Kiza, wrinkling her nose and smooching out her lips.

“Whatever,” she said, swatting at the air. A few bees followed the motion, before carrying on with their evening tasks. “So if it’s not one of our male creatures, who _is_ coming to dinner?”

“Well,” Kiza said, biting her lower lip. “ _Technically_ , you’re the one going to dinner.”

Ͼ

For all the issues that came with it (death threats, terrifying space family, truly obnoxious space bureaucracy, blah blah blah), there were some definite perks to being the Authentic Recurrence of Her Ladyship Seraphi Abrasax, Sovereign of House Abrasax. The inheritance Seraphi had left in trust for her eventual recurrence, aside from, oh, the _entire planet Earth_ , included piles of space-bucks, two alcazars (one in the rings of Orous, one on a moon that Jupiter apparently also owned, both complete with staff and something called “house intelligences”), a small fleet of personal spacecraft, and the most spectacular wardrobe Jupiter had ever encountered.

There was typically little that Jupiter wore fancy space outfits for, though Mr. Night assured her - not very reassuringly - that she would have occasion to meet very many other entitled and other important personages. Up until now, Jupiter had shied away from getting off-world, in part because she was rather more comfortable with her feet planted on the ground (or in the air, as grav-boots went), and in part because she was much, much safer planetside. As of last week, there had been nearly two hundred stymied attempts to contact Jupiter in person, either via messenger or by attempted kidnap. There were, as it turned out, some definite downsides to being the ARoHLSA, SoHA (see: death threats, etc.).

But at precisely 6:17 pm Central Time, when Jupiter first set foot on her very own luxury space-yacht, the downsides were the last thing on her mind. Four members of her personal guard were with her: two men and one woman, all with various tech enhancements, and one otherwise very human-looking splice of completely indeterminate gender.  She was met by Chicanery Night, who smiled his insidious rat smile (Jupiter had decided that he probably couldn’t help it), and ushered her onto a dias that immediately levitated and _swooshed_ her off along the hallway.

Forty-eight luxurious minutes later, Jupiter was clean (space bath!), done up (space makeup!), and wearing a deceptively simple A-line silver dress that glinted and sparkled, and was made up of zillions of tiny pieces of ceramic armoring, each bearing a tiny fleck of a gemstone with a completely unpronounceable name. It was heavier than cloth, but only just, and with a crown of floating iron-grey spires and luminescent gemstones peeping out from within her plaited hair, Jupiter felt every inch a queen.

She was ready when they docked to a much larger ship, with only the slightest whisper of vibration. As the dock pressurized, Jupiter looked over at Mr. Night with one raised brow. He lifted his shoulderblades in a gesture that might have been a shrug.

“Legion T-class starship, your majesty. The Legion likes to use closed dock rather than open ones. It’s, hmm, a matter of safety over appearances.” Jupiter’s lips quirked up in a half-smile.

“You’re getting to know me well, Mr. Night,” she offered, letting some amusement into her voice without thinking about it. He sidled slightly, dropping one shoulder and ducking his chin. Her guard phalanx shifted around them as the docking doors slid open with a hiss.

“Your majesty flatters me,” her seneschal replied, though he looked pleased, so far as she could tell. Jupiter smiled, and turned her attention to the dock. One person waited to greet them across the dock, a woman in Legion uniform, standing at parade rest. She reminded Jupiter of an alley cat – lean, all angled lines and poise, with pale eyes and sharp white teeth standing out against her heavily freckled skin. At Mr. Night’s signal, Jupiter did her best impression of Seraphi Abrasax, sweeping forward with measured steps and keeping her chin up.

_You belong here_ , she told herself, scolding when she wanted to drop her eyes, or worse, flee at the sight of the legionnaire dropping down to one knee. _You can do this._ She thought of Caine, somewhere half across the universe, in communications blackout while he tracked someone across the void of space. Just thinking of him, she felt her shoulders go back, her back straighten. She imagined him standing behind her, placed his presence at her shoulder, six-foot-odd of loyal winged wolf. Jupiter closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. _You’ve got this_. She opened her eyes and offered a smile.

“At ease, soldier,” she said, trying to act like she knew what she was doing. The legionnaire stood up in one smooth motion, and regarded her with a sharp expression.

“Welcome aboard the Silver Eyes, your majesty,” she said. Her voice was as lean as the rest of her, clipped and even. Jupiter smiled a little more. She liked this woman. “If it pleases your majesty, we shall proceed to the meeting room? Mmes. Latran and Messrs. Aureus await you there.”

Jupiter inclined her head. The spires drifted with her, angling and catching the light. “Thank you, ma’am,” she said, “That will do quite well.”

Ͼ

The amount Jupiter knew about lycantants was pathetic. It literally fit on two index cards – she’d brought them with her, though she had them memorized, word for word. The first was the anecdotal information she’d picked up, mostly from Stinger:

>   1. _Lycantants form packs (“finding tain”)_
>   2. _Packless lyc. usually die_
>   3. _If they don’t die, they become fearless & driven_
>   4. _Packs are more than close friends_
>   5. _Lyc. = human + wolf?_
> 


The second was two pasted-on printouts of the three sentences that she’d found in the sheave Stinger had given to that so much as referred to lycantants:

> _“ **Polygynandrous** : This pack type generally has a core composed of 2+ males and 2+ females (primary coalitions) in a romantic or sexual relationship (pack). (Ex. lycantant, melanerpes, volantant)”_
> 
> _“Pack-type splices and species, particularly lycantants and leontants, often display severe disciplinary problems when divorced from their packs (i.e. mood disorders, insomnia, insubordination, aggression, self-harm, suicide). Legion protocol is to accommodate pack structure whenever possible and to prevent pack divorce.”_

So perhaps it was reasonable that when she pictured lycantants, she pictured people that looked like Caine – well-built, pointed ears, large canine teeth, and a growl, but otherwise basically human. Maybe a little darker than Caine since he was “half-albino” (whatever _that_ meant), but it was hard to imagine that they were anything different.

It was a little harder to justify that belief when she was staring up (and up and up…) into the eyes of a pair of solidly seven-foot-tall women. They were obviously sisters, with the same large, broad noses and sharp cheekbones, and all-but-identical half-smirks at Jupiter’s wide-eyed stare. Both had pointed ears that looked like Caine’s, and a similar build ( _burly_ ), but it was clear now why Stinger had referred to Caine as a runt. The duo loomed – there was no other word – with squared shoulders and power stances. They each had to weigh 300 pounds, if they weighed an ounce. Almost as one, they seemed to take pity on her, and glanced at each other. The one to the left bowed and stepped back, gesturing to the table; the one on the right offered her arm.

“If your majesty would,” she said, as Jupiter lay her hand on the forearm of the lycantant. Her hand looked impossibly small, and her skin wan and sallow against the dark and dappled arm of her guest. (Was it weird that they were her guests, when she was a guest on their ship? Though their ship was in her planet’s orbit – a matter for thinking about later, she decided.) Jupiter took the offered seat at the table, and turned her gaze to each member of the table in turn. No doubt her face showed every bit of her shock and frank amazement, but, well, nobody seemed to be taking offense.

“Ah, might I have your names?” she asked, trying (and failing) not to stare at them. She looked over to the sister on her right, the one who had bowed. The woman smiled and laughed, a deep and welcoming sound.

“Please forgive us, your majesty,” she said. Her voice was deeper than any woman Jupiter had met, maybe even deeper than Caine’s rumble. “I’m Coy Latran; my sister is Song.” Her eyes were deep-set, and a curious bright gold that looked like the Baltic amber earrings Katherine had given her for her birthday. Like her sister, her dark skin was dotted with even darker freckles. Beside her, Caine would have looked like a ghost. A _small_ ghost. Jupiter felt a smile flicker across her face as Coy turned her canine gaze to the other members of the dinner party. “Boys?”

There were four of them, and like Coy and Song, they were obviously related. They were all a bit smaller than the women, though it was hard to judge sitting, and they had narrower faces with aquiline noses, and were all varying shades of solid wood-brown. The first was easy to distinguish from the others; he had a slight but distinct overbite, and all four of his canine teeth were larger than a human’s. Like Caine, he wore his facial hair in a goatee; rather unlike Caine, he also wore his black-and-brown hair long, braided and pinned up. He could have easily snapped anyone who dared suggest it was feminine like a toothpick. His name was Jack Aureus.

The next brother was Gold; his eyes were the same bright yellow as Coy’s, and he wore a supple chainmail collar around his neck. He licked Jack on the cheek before yanking on the next lycantant’s ear. This startled a bark out of Aureus #3, a slender man with peppered black-red-blond close-cropped hair and stubble, who introduced himself as “Naria, the handsome one,” with a sidelong glance over at Song, who smirked. The last male looked almost the same as Gold, with darker, almost orange eyes, curling short hair, and a long scar running down from the corner of his right eye to off the corner of his jaw, and he was Reed.

Feeling rather bewildered – this was quite a lot of strangers to converse with in the first place, and nevermind that they were also _enormous wolf people_ – Jupiter just nodded and smiled her way through the first half of the dinner conversation. It took her that long to get a grip on herself, and start paying attention to the actual behavior of the pack. After all, wasn’t that why she was here?

It took a few minutes of observation – as she worked her way through a truly fantastic steak of some sort, garnished with a sweet fruit-and-mushroom sauce – to start to articulate for herself what she’d been seeing for the past half-hour. She’d lived in a huge family her whole life, packed into one tiny house, and knew their patterns and habits well. She could tell when her uncle was going to give a speech, or the precise moment when latkes went from delicious food to dangerous weapon.

Watching the lycantant pack was nothing like that. Here’s what it was like:

_The summer heat lies thick and heady. The corn is tasselling and the bees thrum, a vibration of the earth and the air and the swaying of the fields. Your hips twitch in time to the music blaring from the radio on the decaying porch, and the bees pulse around you. With a shout as the song peaks, you jump, and they anticipate you, great streamers and swarms and oceans of movement, an extension of exuberance_

And:

_You are falling, and falling, and you are laughing, and the wind streams through your hair. Tears are plucked from your eyes by the sky, and Caine falls with you, his hawk’s wings tucked. And his arms are on you and you are falling in twain, and then you are flying, and his hand is on your hip, and you are like a creature unbounded_

And:

_It’s the first time you’ve been on a horse, but Katherine knows that, and she made sure you were on a horse that knew how to take care of a new rider. You lean forward and the mare jounces into a trot then slides into a canter, and Katherine is yelling to relax, and you finally do, and for one glorious moment it feels like you are flying, like the horse between your thighs is part of your body, a body you never knew was yours until this moment, until the two of you are one of you and you are running with four hooves and two hearts and one mind under the wheeling blue sky_

As Jupiter watched and remembered, she ate mechanically, barely tasting the food. Uncertainty and stress at dealing with so many new people shifted into a sort of heartsickness, a sympathetic pain for everything Caine should have had and so clearly never had. It wasn’t really real to Jupiter until this moment, that Caine was a lycantant without a pack.The phrase, sure, she heard it, and in a sort of way understood it, but in the way that she had understood that Caine was the runt of his litter. Until she was faced with what he was meant to be – with what he was meant to _have_ – it was all just semantics. How could she ever match up?

There was a pause – and Jupiter flushed as she realized that Song had asked her a question, which she had missed. Because she was staring at the way Song and Naria and Reed sat next to each other, the way the space between them was perfectly maintained until it wasn’t, and the way it was obvious that every motion they made was in sync with each other.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, trying not to stammer. “Can you repeat the question?” Song smiled at her, and for a moment Jupiter was reminded of the fond way her mother smiled at her. It felt like solid ground beneath her feet.

“There is no offense, your majesty,” she said, her deep rumble kind. “I was merely wondering if you might allow my sister and pack to retire, so you and I may speak more personally?” Jupiter felt herself blushing, tried to remind herself again that she belonged here, that Stinger had pulled a personal favor to get a Legion ship to divert to the Sol system. They were here for _her_. And she was here for Caine. She took a breath, and smiled, trying to express her thanks.

“Of course,” Jupiter said, turning to Coy and the four males. “It was a pleasure to meet all of you, and very, um, instructive. You have my thanks.” Jack chuckled and stood from the table, stretching his back slightly before offering her a bow.

He looked up, and the corner of his mouth twitched up into a sort of smile. Jupiter finally noticed his eyes – a cold clear blue, the color of deep water and alpine lakes. But his words rang warm and true as he said, “Ah, majesty, you have our thanks. Leftenant Apini spoke highly of you, and it was a pleasure to prove his words true.” His words drew a smile across her face as he tangled his fingers with Coy’s, and tossed an arm around his brother.

The other men offered her murmured farewells; on passing, Reed took her hand and touched a gossamer kiss to her knuckles. Jupiter met his eyes and immediately felt herself blushing again when he smiled his goodbye. When she managed to catch her breath and sit again, Song was watching her, a soft smile on her face. Jupiter ducked her chin down, before catching herself and meeting the lycantant’s eyes. Song’s smile grew, and this time she was the one to look away.

“What do you think of my pack?” the lycantant asked, toying with her glass of water. She glanced back over at Jupiter, but didn’t try and catch her gaze. Jupiter’s lips twitched, somewhat wry. It was hard to put into words, all the things she thought of the pack.

“I don’t think I really understood what a pack was, before tonight,” Jupiter said, the words dragging out of her in slow bursts. She looked down at the table, at her empty plate and pale fingers. She felt like a queen in her silver dress and her iron crown, but somewhere between seeing Coy and Song for the first time and watching the pack move together as one, she’d just become Jupiter again, Jupiter in a too-fancy dress borrowed from a dead space queen, along with her weird space jewelry.

The lycantant made a soft noise, something between a _whoof_  and a sigh. Jupiter looked over, raising one brow. Song’s lips quirked up in a smile, before she smoothed her expression again.

“Your majesty is an expressive woman,” she said, all bland banality. Jupiter laughed, sudden, feeling the strangeness of the situation sliding off her again. Yes, this was _totally weird_ , and yes, she was the genetic reincarnation of a dead space queen talking to a seven-foot-tall werewolf from space. But, so what? She was also dating a wolf-man with wings, and he was the best thing that had ever happened to her.

“I’ve been told it’s a family trait,” Jupiter replied, trying to match Song for bland tone. She only half-succeeded, thinking not only of the weekly dinner table fights (she _was_ a Blatnikov, after all), but also of the holographic recordings she’d been watching of Seraphi Abrasax, and of the infamous Abrasax temper she’d seen demonstrated in boardrooms and parties time and again, hopscotch across the universe. Song snorted, and tried to cover it up with a cough, which just made Jupiter laugh again. “Oh, god, I’m so sorry, I’m not laughing at you,” she said, trying to stifle peals of laughter. “This is just so strange for me.” Song ducked her chin down, glancing up through dense lashes, the corners of her eyes crinkling.

“Hmm, I suppose I can say that it’s a new experience for me as well, your majesty,” the lycantant said. She smiled, reminiscent of the small sly smiles Chicanery so often favored Jupiter with. Song rested her elbows on the table, and her chin on her laced fingers. “From what Leftenant Apini told me, there’s a lot of new experiences your majesty has been having.”

Jupiter raised both her brows. “Is that so?” she asked, trying for arch and sounding pettier than she had hoped for. Song’s smile widened, the right corner of her mouth pulling up higher than the left.

“We had hoped to get permission from your majesty to conduct training on Earth for the next week or so,” Song offered, diffident. “It might give us time to, hmm, connect?”

“Please, call me Jupiter.” Your majesty was a phrase she liked on Caine’s tongue. She tolerated it from everyone else – it seemed she couldn’t get rid of it – but it was a little exhausting. “So long as you don’t cause any damage to anyone, I don’t see the harm in letting you, um, use Earth for some training. I’ll have Mr. Night talk to your people. But please—” Jupiter shook her head. “I’d prefer not to speak in code here. What, exactly, do you want? And what are you prepared to offer in trade?”

Song’s smile slid wide, and she flicked her eyes up to catch Jupiter’s. It was the first time she really got a good look at the lycantant’s eyes, the first time she was really looking. They were tricolored: the right eye a jasper-gold, the left tawny brown halved with blue. It was unnerving. Jupiter couldn’t look away. The lycantant tilted her head, blinked, and pursed her lips. Her uncanny eyes dropped back down a fraction, still on Jupiter’s face, but no longer in her gaze.

“We’re here to discharge an old debt to your friend Stinger,” Song said. Her voice was all business. “He saved my life and my pack, and I'm going to save yours in return.” She stopped silent, and looked back up. Jupiter sat, captured by those eyes, and willed herself to maintain her composure. “I know what it is that your Caine needs, Jupiter, and I’m willing to give it to you. I’m going to teach you what it means to be a lycantant bitch.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently I can't manage to write anything remotely akin to a short fic. And 5500 words later... Hopefully the inclusion of various OCs doesn't throw anyone out of the story too much!
> 
> Mick Formis is an ant splice. If canon can go all-out puns for names, so can I!
> 
> My take on lycantant social behavior isn't based on any one species, but is informed by a variety of social animals, including: grey wolves, African wild dogs, spotted hyenas, lions, groove-billed anis, and acorn woodpeckers.


	3. Like a Lycaon

"Jupiter, wake up! _Pzzt!_ Get up, Jupiter!" It was dark, and for one horrible, sinking moment, Jupiter  _knew_ that none of it had been real - that she wasn't the reincarnation of a dead and terrifying space queen, that nobody had fallen from the sky to rescue her from her horrible life, and that today she faced more of the same life stretching out: toilets, arguments, and ingrown dreams. No spectacular dresses and eerily silent space battles. No perfect kiss within a falling refinery. No sweeping space opera. No Caine. Her eyes flew open as Kiza grabbed her foot and shook it, and reality came crashing back in again in all its imperfect perfection.

"Umf, Kiza," she groaned. "It's like 4am. Can't a queen get some beauty rest?" It was only half a joke, as she flipped the covers down and gave her friend _look_ with tired eyes and no doubt notorious bedhead. But it only took a moment for Jupiter to figure out that Kiza was really, truly upset, too upset to even talk any more. She just stood there, wringing her hands, eyebrows pulled together, making little buzzing sounds.  _Bzzt! Bzzt! Bzzt!_

"Ah, your majesty?" That was Chicanery. Jupiter leaned over to look past Kiza, taking in the sight of the rat splice: 1) in his pajamas, 2) with his usually perfectly coiffed hair pulled back into a messy man-bun, and 3) wearing what most definitely was a fresh hickey on his neck, with remarkable aplomb. It probably had a lot to do with still being half-asleep, but Jupiter was long beyond dignity at this point. Yawning, she reached up and grabbed Kiza's wrist, tugging her down to sit on the bed, and started rubbing her shoulders to try and calm her down.

"Mr. Night," she said, sounding remarkably weary even to herself. "What brings you here? And, ah, at such a time." Chicanery hunched his shoulders, one hand reaching up to cover the mark on his neck. Kiza was settling down, her body growing less tense, and Jupiter stroked her hair, like a mother might.

"It's, ah, an emergency."

"I gathered as much," Jupiter said, wry, and rubbed her eyes. "You okay, Kiza?" The younger woman took a deep breath, and nodded. Jupiter gave her head a little scratch and slid out of bed, to the shocked squeak of one Mr. Night. She looked down at herself and shrugged. So, she was wearing an oversized t-shirt and little else. At least she didn't have any hickies - though, truth be told, as that might suggest that she and Caine were getting it on, hickies would not be entirely unwelcome. She blushed, thinking of just what sort of shenanigans might lead to _that_ , and took a deep breath to steady herself. Maybe Chicanery would think it was due to her own garb. Jupiter looked back up and noted (with some relief) that Chicanery was pointedly staring at the floor about a yard to her left.

"Look," she sighed. "I'm only half-awake and half-dressed, but neither of you are any better. So can we move past embarrassment and into telling me what the hell is wrong?" Jupiter looked over at Kiza, who jerked her head back over at Chicanery. Jupiter raised her brows and tapped her toes, once - a tic she had discovered she shared with her putative prior self, one meaning _speak now or so help me God._ It worked. Chicanery jumped (maybe it was a family trait; Jupiter did not want to be on the receiving end of Balem's mad wrath, ever again) and met Jupiter's eyes for a moment before ducking his chin down.

"Your majesty, the - ah - the entire sargorn nation is in orbit around Earth. Demanding, of course, to speak to your eminent self. They portalled in less than twenty minutes ago." The words left him in a rush, and he gave her a sidling smile.

Jupiter felt her lips thinning. "I see." She chewed her lip for a moment. "No delaying?" Chicanery shook his head. "No dickering either, huh?" A shrug and pained expression. Jupiter groaned. "это пиздец. I'm guessing this is entirely illegal on their part, the Aegis is too far to arrive in a timely fashion, and you're going to use this as more ammunition to convince me to buy my own private armed forces."

Chicanery smiled again, a little smirk with a tiny shrug. "Right on all counts, your majesty."

Jupiter rolled her eyes. "Okay, next question: do we have any clue what they want?" The rat splice gave an eloquent shrug and Jupiter could feel a stress headache coming on. Wonderful. This was just... wonderful.

"If I could take a guess?" Kiza said, sounding strained, but not quite as panicked. She buzzed her esses slightly, and Jupiter rested her hand on Kiza's shoulder. Kiza gave her a look of thanks, and turned to Chicanery. "I've been following the proceedings in the injunctions filed against Balem, and the inheritance stuff, too. Mostly petty, but two days ago, it was ruled in the secondary civil courts that the sargorn species was only privately retained by Balem, not bonded, and neither bonded nor claimable by the corporation. Um, and nobody contested, so they're now free agents." Chicanery looked stunned by what was apparently some sort of revelation, but Jupiter just plopped back down on the bed, more confused than before.

"In five-year-old words, please?" she asked, pained. Kiza giggled, so soft as to be barely audible, and Jupiter smiled in automatic response. "I can't handle space bureaucracy before noon, let alone sunrise."

"The sargorn--" Chicanery started. Jupiter pinned him with a glare, and he raised his brows. "The dinosaur men were made by, ah, the people who seeded - who put humans on earth, to be big and scary and... your majesty, must I?" Jupiter's lips twitched, and she tried (and failed) not to laugh. Chicanery looked even more pained.

"Technically, they're dinosaur women," Kiza volunteered. Jupiter raised her brows at that. "What? Haven't you read any of the proceedings?"

"I really ought to pay you," Jupiter muttered. In a normal voice, she added, "I've, um, skimmed a few?" Chicanery snorted and tried to cover it up with a coughing fit. Jupiter ignored him. "Look, I don't really care that much about how many space-bucks I get from his estate. I'm just glad he can't hurt the people I care about any more."

"That's fair, majesty," Kiza said, grave. "But if you want to change things like you say you do, you're going to have to get political."

"A lecture for another day?" Jupiter asked. Kiza smiled a little at that, and held out her hand. Jupiter shook it. "Deal."

"Deal."

Chicanery cleared his throat. "If we could get back to the matter at hand...?"

"Yeah, sorry," Jupiter said. "I don't usually do so hot in the mornings. Dinosaur women. Made by some Abrasax long ago to be scary guards. Why are they here?" Chicanery's nose twitched and Jupiter relented. "Okay, fine, just say it in a way I can understand." The splice relaxed a fraction, and tugged on his nightshirt to straighten it out.

"Lord Balem didn't own the sargorn, he just hired them - privately. They were owned by Seraphi, no?" He looked to Kiza for confirmation; she nodded assent. "I, ah, haven't read all the proceedings just yet, but from what I recall, when Lord Titus no longer could afford to maintain the sargorn he inherited, he sold them privately to Lord Balem. We, ah, he, ah, reprobated them to evade taxes on privately held military assets." Chicanery shuffled, as if he was a bit embarrassed by this, in light of the new facts. "The world is not, hmm, kind, not to unbonded repurposes and splices. I doubt even the Legion would take them."

"Kalique doesn't want them, Titus can't afford them, and the Abrasax Industries corporation shifted to automated defenses millenia ago," Kiza said flatly. Jupiter winced, imagining for a moment what it must be like to be a soldier with no options ( _in her mind it was always Caine, and her heart hurt for that_ ). "They're either here to kill you for it, or beg you to bond them."

Jupiter wrinkled her nose. "I'd _really_ rather not get killed by space dinosaurs." Kiza smiled and patted her shoulder.

"You have guards," she started.

Jupiter perked up. "I almost forgot! Song and her pack. They're here with a whole Legion ship. Can't we convince them to escort us?" She watched Chicanery open his mouth, as if in protest, close it, open it again, and then turn a remarkable shade of red. Kiza giggled, and Jupiter tried her hardest not to do the same.

"I may have forgotten about them," Chicanery admitted.

Ͼ

By the time the first tinge of false dawn had colored the sky, Jupiter was on board a Legion planetary cruiser, en route for the sargorn flagship. She wasn't entirely clear on where the cruiser had come from - either from the Silver Eyes, or assigned to her guards - but it was currently staffed by the majority of her guard contingent, several gunners from the Silver Eyes, and several packs of lycantants. Even the command deck was packed, what with the pilots and... pilot assistants?, Kiza, Chicanery, Song, two of the Aureus brothers, and of course, Jupiter herself.

As the unsettling view of no less than two dozen massive starships slid into view upon breaking through the atmosphere, Jupiter turned to Song. The lycantant glanced down at her through hooded eyes, and turned away from listening to the conversation between Kiza and Naria (who was also braiding his brother Jack's hair with the elegance of long practice.)

"Your majesty is worried," she said. Jupiter grimaced.

"Jupiter, remember?" she said. "And yeah, I'm worried. I'm about to go face down a warship full of potentially murderous dinosaurs in jeans and a t-shirt." She plucked at her clothes, a plain black tee under a leather jacket, and, yes, a pair of comfortable jeans. There hadn't been time to call in her own ship, which was kept hiding behind the dark side of the moon. Even Chicanery, usually so exactingly put-together, was dressed in some of Stinger's old clothes. He looked  _particularly_ uncomfortable, and kept tugging at his borrowed garb. "THAT--" she gestured to the window framing the sargorn ships as they drew closer, "is nervous-making."

Song snorted at that, as if she had faced down rather more intimidating sights in her time. Well, she probably had. "Lesson one, Jupiter," the lycantant said, and Jupiter straightened her back as soon as she heard that familiar lecture voice. "Assume your power."

Jupiter quirked one brow at that. "What do you mean?"

"Hm, it's hard to find the words for it," Song said, tilting her head to the side in an almost dog-like quirk. Her eyes settled on Jack and Naria, the latter of whom was pinning up Jack's long braids into elegant whorls. The corner of her mouth tugged up into a smile before settling again, a flash of expression. "Imagine... that you're bigger than them. Pull yourself up. You don't just want to pretend that you have the power, you need to feel that you have it." The lycantant grimaced, and shook her head. "It would be easier if I could just show you, but that will have to wait. Think of a time you were in perfect control. Let that feeling sweep over you."

"Incoming hail, Captain Latran," one of the people manning the ship controls said. Jupiter looked over - it was one of her guards, a south-Asian woman with maroon eyes and massive, sweeping bat wings and the somewhat strange name of Fox Gachiro.

Song held up one hand. "Hold for a moment, Ms. Gachiro," she said, and turned to Jupiter. "Do it, Jupiter. Remember what it's like to wear power."

Jupiter made a face, but at the penetrating stare being levied at her from the lycantant, sighed and closed her eyes. Was there ever a time when she'd been in perfect control, been completely in her own power? She'd grown up in constant low-level fear of being deported, she'd spent her life yearning for something else, something  _more_ , and then she'd been thrust into a world totally outside of her control. The only times she'd felt possessed of nothing but power had been when- had been-

_The dress, once so overwhelming, feels like a piece of tawdry costume, like something a doll would be dressed in. You could shed it like a snake sheds its skin, and be untouched by its memory. The heat from Caine's body is a wall against your back, the line of his arm extending into the gun levied with perfect stillness into the face of Titus Abrasax. He smells like salt, ash, spice. You can feel the tension melting off of you like snow sliding off of the roof in the first warm day of spring, like some great weight slipping off your shoulders._

_"May I kill him?" Caine asks, his voice rough with desire, and for a moment you can see that sick smug mask wiped off of Titus' face, replaced with an expression of true fear. You can feel your upper lip tighten into a slight sneer, into disgust. Caine is holding the gun, but it is your finger on the trigger._

Jupiter opened her eyes, looked up into Song's tricolored eyes, and let herself sink into that feeling, trying to memorize it: shoulder down, neck long, with the impossible truth of  _the trigger is mine to pull_ staring out of her eyes. Song smiled, slow and feral, her teeth bared in the pleasure of the battle. Jack and Naria were there, without a word, flanking their mate as she turned back to Fox and nodded. All eyes moved to the great front window as the image was replaced with a crisp picture of the inside of the sargorn flagship. _  
_

The screen was dominated by three sargorn standing at attention. They were essentially identical to Jupiter's untrained eye, huge dragon people in what looked like black leather uniforms. They didn't really look much like dinosaurs, with their dark green skin, crocodile teeth, sun-yellow cat eyes, and huge spiked wings. She'd seen enough of them - looming in her family's half-destroyed home, piloting her to Balem's ill-fated Jupiter Refinery, punching in the codes to torture her family - never to forget those monstrous faces. There was the sound of growling, the low rumbles springing unbidden from the throats of her lycantant guards. Jupiter could hear the sargorn growling in return, and could have laughed, if she wasn't in very real fear for her life. _Just like dogs._

She leaned forward, resting her hands on the back of the captain's chair. The growls from the lycantants subsided to just the edge of hearing, though the rapid guttural  _kh,kh,kh_ growl of the sargorns was still quite audible.  _My finger is on the trigger_ , she thought, and felt herself relax into that, as if the confrontation was already over.

"Silence," she said. Her voice sounded both cold and calm to her ears, and she had to turn her grin of delight into a sardonic little smirk as the sound of sargorn and lycantant growl alike cut to silence. "You came into my my home without invitation and against intergalactic law," she continued, trying to keep remembering the feeling of saying  _"Just get me out of here"_ and knowing that she would be obeyed without hesitation. "You demanded to see me. Here I am. Now tell me why I shouldn't have your species blotted out of my skies." It sounded good. Jupiter hoped that the fact that she had no ability to follow through would slip past under the memory of the fact that Seraphi surely could have carried out the threat - and might have.

"Your majesty,y,y," the center sargorn rumbled. Jupiter watched it - her? - through narrowed eyes. "This system is interdicted. By the time we could have contacted you through official channels, it would have been too late for us." The sargorn glanced to her right, rumbled again, and stepped back, furling her wings tight against her back. From behind her came two sargorn children, holding hands, and looking as frightened as any human child could. "My,y,y children, your majesty," the sargorn said. Jupiter could feel her eyebrows shooting up and the tension in the room around her. The lycantants were growling again, and Jupiter held up her hand to silence them. They obeyed, barely.

"What do you mean, too late?" Jupiter asked. "And why show us your children? For pity?" If it was a ruse, it was working. It was hard not to feel pity for the two children that stood, shaking so hard she could hear the rustle of their wings through the comm-link. They looked no older than five or six, assuming sargorns aged like humans, and their new-minted gold eyes were moist and frightened.

"Yes, majesty," the sargorn said, unable to meet Jupiter's eyes any longer. With what sounded like an agonized growl, the sargorn sank to her knees behind her children, mantling her wings. She looked like the injured dove Jupiter had found when she was fourteen, struck by a car, dazed and dying, with yellow pleading eyes. The other sargorn in the room knelt, with a rustle of wings and the guttural rumble of many wounded voices. Some got to all fours, heads hung low and wings laying limp, dragging on the floor.

"We did not know, majesty," one of the other sargorns said, not looking up from the floor. Her wings flexed, and hung limp again. "To break bond is dea,ea,eath. We had to obey."

"Balem," Jupiter said, mouth so dry it came out as a whisper. Her heart was in her throat, and all at once she felt sick to her stomach, like she might puke. She tried to steady herself, to get back into a place of power, but all she felt was overwhelming horror. She hadn't known, she hadn't  _known_ , not this, and for a moment her mind was overtaken by the black nausea clawing at her throat. Then a hand was on her hand, and she looked over, and Kiza was there, hazel eyes wide with shock and compassion, and Jupiter gathered her breath and her courage. "Balem," she said again, louder. A number of the sargorn twitched, and one of the children buried their face against their mother's shoulder. "You kidnapped my family at his orders. You would have tortured them to death. Me! You tried to kill  _Caine._ "

The center sargorn looked up at her, eyes bright. "We beg for mercy,y,y, majesty. If you do not claim us, our children will be auct-" her voice cracked, broke. She stopped, head and voice low. "They will be auctioned, majesty, as reparation for fines incurred and injunctions levied as independent agents in the actions against you in the Sol System." Her voice had gone mechanical, reciting something heard many times. "Nobody will purchase a clipped criminal. We are worse than free mercenaries." She stopped, shoulders hunched, and looked away. "We will await your decision."

The screen went black, and faded to the view of the sargorn ships hanging in space.

Nobody spoke for a very long moment. Jupiter felt like crying, felt like raging.

" _This_." She wheeled, feeling the heat of righteous anger fizzing under her skin. " _You._ " She pointed her finger at Chicanery, who recoiled, almost colliding with the guard manning the deck next to him. "You knew. You  _knew!_ And nobody saw fit to tell me, that they'll sell your  _children_ , that to disobey is  _death_?" _  
_

"Your majesty--" someone began. She didn't know who it was. She didn't care.

" _My name is Jupiter!_ " Her voice was a scream.

Ͼ

She was in someone's room. She didn't know whose it was, only that it was close, it was open, and she could spend her rage screaming and crying without causing anyone serious harm. She was spent, and a terrible sword hung over her: accept the creatures who had kidnapped and threaten her family under Balem's orders, or condemn them to be clipped, auctioned, sold and spent like so much chattel.

She lay curled on the bed of a stranger, tears dry on her face. She wanted Caine there, wanted him with a yearning that was a deep with pain.

Caine was bonded to the Legion. He couldn't come. To disobey the Legion (and to be with her) was death.

She wanted to keep crying, but her tears were dry. The sorrow came out as a heavy, shuddering sigh. There was no more weeping left in her, not for herself, not for Caine, not for the whole hellish world she'd been thrust into.

The door chimed, and slid open, and shut again. Someone had come, and Jupiter was not inclined for words of comfort. She opened her mouth to command the person to leave.  _To disobey is death_ , rang through her head,  _to break bond is death_ , in the low and shattered voice of a sargorn.

_I have to go, Caine says, and his hazel-green eyes are dark with something you don't recognize._

"Get up, Jupiter." The voice was low, and sad, and kind. Jupiter turned, and looked over at the massive form of Song Latran.

"Why," Jupiter said, voice dull and exhausted. "How can I make that decision?"

"Like a lycaon," Song replied, and held out her hand.

Ͼ

They walked in silence down the hallway of the cruiser. It was empty - perhaps Song had cleared the path before she had gone to fetch Jupiter, or perhaps everyone was still prepared for battle. Jupiter had to take two steps for Song's every one, and the sound of their footsteps made an odd little rhythm and made Jupiter feel like a child again. She had the power to purchase Song and force her to kill everyone on board, but yet, it was the lycantant who assumed the power between them. Song came to a stop in front of a door and glanced down at Jupiter. She looked conflicted for a moment, then sighed. The expression passed, and Jupiter looked back up at her with red-rimmed eyes and salt-crusted lashes.

"Jupiter..." She shook her head. "You dropped your cards at the dinner. Most of what you wrote down is right, or close to, but you need to know: lycantants are not some combination of wolves and humans." Jupiter felt her brows perk at this, though she had slipped into a rather dark depression. Song smiled, the faintest touch of an expression. "The lycantant genome is based on something...  _similar_ to an Earth wolf, but in many ways, very different. Stinger said you got the neural implant, yes?"

Self-conscious, Jupiter reached up and touched the spot behind her ear where the implant interfaced. The fake skin that covered it felt normal, but if she pressed down, she could feel the round metal contour of the link into her brain. Seeing that, Song nodded, a slight duck of the chin, and turned back to the door, resting her hand on it.

"Each of our lycaons has a neural uplink, so that handler and lycaon can work in silence." The big lycantant shrugged. "It can be disorienting at first, but I won't let it overwhelm you too far." Song opened the door and stepped inside, holding it open for her. Jupiter hesitated for a moment, not liking the idea of having space wolves uplinking to her brain, or the words  _overwhelm_ and  _too far_ in such close proximity to each other. Then she thought about Caine, and that look, and what she'd promised herself.

She stepped inside the door. Song let it swing shut.

They were standing on a small platform over a massive room. It looked like some sort of repurposed storage bay, full of crates, with gnawed bones and ropes scattered about. Jupiter walked out onto a catwalk and stared in fascination at one of the great creatures sprawled down below. It was superficially like a dog or a wolf: four-legged, lanky, with a plumed tail, tall pointed ears, and a muzzle. But it was dappled, with both freckles and spots, and its fur was dark, except for the long mane of red-brown hair lying along its spine. It looked up at her and yawned, revealing massive lower canines and a long red tongue, before turning to nip at its flank. Scratching?

Another came to join it, a little smaller. Like the first, it had a mane down its spine, but its was ivory ticked with dark brown. It turned, and Jupiter could see that it was quite clearly male. He licked the jaw of the larger lycaon; there was an answering rumble. Jupiter turned to Song, the question in her eyes.

Song smiled. "The big one is Napalm. She's the granddam of the bunch, and her sister Nemesis is no more. The boy is one of her second litter. His name is Gatling, and his brothers are probably still sleeping, lazy creatures."

"Why did he lick her jaw?" Jupiter asked.

Song smiled again, and held out a small metal bead. "See for yourself."

Ͼ

_There are twenty-four of you, and you all have names that sound like war and family._

_There is one pack: Blood and Burnt and Bastion, brothers three;_ _Victory and Valor, sisters, young and wild still._ _Their dam, the bitch Menace, and her sisters Mortality and Might. Their mates, Acquit and Quiet, and the brothers Gatling and Gate and Gomorrah and Giant._ _The granddam Napalm (and Nemesis is no more)._

_There is another: Portal and Portent, sisters in violence, and their mates, Savage and Silence and Sorrow. Sucking on the teats of their mother, the brothers Lethal and Legend and their lone sister Chaos._

_And there is the one who was found: Warlord, lady of loneliness, dealer of death, unlucky in love._

Ͼ

 _You are a bitch named Napalm, and your pack is all around you. Your son Gatling licks your jaw, and you can feel the sparkle of love and affection kindle deep inside. You rumble at him, the scent of his saliva tacky and full of him: his fire, verve, desire for battle and for a mate. You slide your jaw along his, rubbing your scent into him, reuniting the pack in scent and being. You can smell them all, in your fur and in the air and in his. Above you are two new sets of smells, one familiar (her name is a song and her smell is power and the sharp cut of steel) and one strange (salt and sorrow and desire). You bark, a deep_ hoomph _of a sound, and hear the answering yips and barks from all around. The second pack knows your voice, and does not call, but you know them, too._

_You are a jack named Savage, and it is a name you came by honestly. Your teeth tore out the throat of Nemesis, and when you hear Napalm call, you sink lower onto your belly and turn your head away from the sound. It is not so hard to remember being thrown to the ground or the terror of being left alive when you can smell the blood of your brothers through the blood of the killing. It is not so hard to remember the feeling of groveling while Napalm calls and calls for her sister who is gasping through the blood on her throat. You whimper, and feel the touch on your cheek of the nose of your brother._

_You are a puppy and your name you cannot remember, but it is warm and you are full and the sounds of barks and yips sound like pack to your young ears. You mewl in response and can feel the rumble of your dam. She in turn cries back in response to the commanding call, a sing-song laughing howl._

_You are a bitch named Portent and you are lying in your den, puppies at your teats, and the singing of your voice fills the metal crate and reverberates in steel song. Your nose is overwhelmed with milk and puppies (they are yours and they are Portal's and they are your mates'), but you can smell the scents of the pack on you, yours and one other and another._

_You are the other, alone and surrounded. At the song of packs you tuck your nose deep under your tail and inhale your own smells: female, aging, unmated, healthy, infertile, violent, alone._

_You are a jack named Gomorrah, and you follow the smell of unease to a crate full of brothers: Silence and Sorrow and Savage. You yip, softly, scenting the warm air of their bedding-den, tasting their regret and their fear and their loneliness. Your brother (he is Gate) he is with you, and together you step into the darkness, towards the gleaming eyes. You smell of welcome and forgiveness: our dam has allowed it and so must we. With a sigh, you bed down, flank-to-flank with the killers, but they are one with you now, and their trespasses must be forgotten._

Ͼ

When Jupiter came to, she could feel the wet tracks tracing down her face, tears without sobs, tears she had not thought she could shed. Song was holding her, stroking her hair with all the gentleness of her own mother. Jupiter sniffed, and pushed herself back upright. The lycantant released her, and took a step back; Jupiter took a deep breath, looked up, and met Song's eyes without wavering.

"What happened?" She could still feel the lycaons, but her mind had reasserted herself; she was the one in the forefront once again. Gate yawned, and Jupiter yawned with him. She could see the muscles in Song's jaws working not to do the same.  _Pack mentality_ , she thought.

"The Legion isn't the only force available for hire," Song said, turning away and leaning on the catwalk railing to stare down at the lycaons. "Nor the only ones that use lycaons for our tactics. We tangled with a group of marauders off in Andromeda - not too far from here, all else equal." She paused. "We won. Not without losses... but we won."

"And the packs?" Jupiter asked, when it became obvious that Song wasn't going to continue.

_(the feeling of groveling)_

_(welcome and forgiveness)_

"Lycaons aren't like people, Jupiter," the lycantant said with a sigh. "Most animals aren't. They don't kill for revenge - not usually, at least. Once the fight was over, the packs started to make peace. We helped it along, of course, kept the spats from turning to fights. But they start to forgive, and start to forget."

Jupiter looked away from Song, looked down at Napalm. She had lost her sister - Jupiter had a sense that she really didn't understand what that meant, but to her it felt like the all-consuming terror when a sargorn typed in the instructions to harvest her mother and when those horrible instruments started to whine.

"You're saying I should forgive them." Flat. Unforgiving. She knew it was, knew somewhere inside that she couldn't condemn them to being taken apart like they would have taken her mother apart. _Not all of them,_ some traitorous part of her mind insisted. _  
_

Song glanced at her, and looked away. "I'm saying that you could, Jupiter." Her voice was gentle, as gentle as her hands stroking her hair had been, while she cried for a sister she'd never known and a loneliness that never went away. "Lesson 2: Make a clean choice. Kill them or keep them, but don't give them up to the scavengers."

"You don't have the right to tell me that," Jupiter said, hearing her voice as if from far away, queerly cold and detached. Song laughed, a single bark of sound, and Jupiter felt ears perk below and attentions shift. A few yipped. She reached behind her own ear and removed the bead, feeling the pack fall away into silence with a mixture of relief and loss.

The lycantant looked over, her eyes colder than they had been a moment before. Jupiter met the judgment there, and felt herself flushing with shame, but refused to look away, feeling her back stiffen. The corner of Song's mouth twitched upwards, and she looked away first. "I have no right but that which you give me," Song said in agreement. "You came to me for lessons, and I'm here to give them to you, however little you like them. But remember: your Caine needs your forgiveness as much as those sargorn do."


	4. Fulcrum

Song was gone, but Jupiter remained, staring down into the lycaon pens without seeing them. Rage sparked behind her eyes – how dare she tell her what to do, tell her what she needed, tell her what _Caine_ needed? She could feel her pulse pounding hard beneath her skin, the force of her heartbeat making the black cotton of her shirt flutter in time, and for a time (seconds? minutes? more?) she let the anger consume her. It felt righteous, and glorious, like she could bend the cold steel of the railing with the ligaments of her fingers, or bite through fate with the force of the clenching of her jaw.

It was exhausting.

It was a lie.

Jupiter knew it was a lie, knew that the red tide of fury ( _the famous Abrasax temper_ ) was just a reaction to other things that wanted to remain unnameable, unpinned, sliding out of grasp like leeches in the pond. And yet, it was so tempting, that lie, to pretend that she was angry, that it was well-deserved anger. Wasn’t she a queen?

Movement caught her eye, and a low growl her ear; her attention was snapped away from the sucking muck of anger as a lycaon launched itself from the roof of one of the containers, a staggering thirty foot vertical leap. Jupiter watched in wide-eyed horror as the massive beast clawed for purchase on the railing at the apex of its jump, scrabbling onto the walkway not twenty feet away. It shook itself, fur fluffing out in all directions, and the tall mane lifted vertically.

Jupiter didn’t realize she was backing up until her back hit the wall, and hard. She had to stifle a hysterical laugh as the lycaon took a step forward, and another, its head raised and nostrils flaring, the panting sound of its breath hot and heavy. Was this seriously how she was going to die? After murderous keepers, bounty hunters, matricidal space kids, and many falls? She was going to die here, alone, on board a spaceship full of people who were supposed to be protecting her, eaten by an animal that she was supposed to be learning about.

The pain in her hand was from the grip she had on a small metal bead, the edges digging into her palm as her bones creaked with the white-edge force of survival.

Ͼ

_It has been an eternity alone in a body meant for companionship, and you have been confronted with the one thing you thought was barred from you forever. You can smell it on her – the sick sharp smell of adrenaline and the salt and savor of tears. There are names for the turmoil roiling in the heart of the small girl before you: fear loneliness terror despair pity mourning – But beneath it all, she smells like petrichor and sunshowers, the rainfall steaming off black basalt under the golden heat of the sun and soaking into your bones, like coming home to the den at a flat run for the joy of running, the fire of blooding prey singing under your skin –_

_She is shaking, trembling, and her fear has ten thousand names and ten thousand reasons, but you cannot stay away from the impossible draw of an impossible thing. You are an animal, but you are wise in the way a beast can be, and you know this: if you let her leave, you will never be able to survive walking alone again._

_But you will do it if she asks it._

_You whoof, softly, trying not to be so frightening. You remember, in the dim clarity of the past, the sharp agony of being driven off, for being wrong in some way, and you shiver in remembrance. Mane down, eyes, down, tail between your legs, bowing your shoulder. Please touch me, you think, and you must close your eyes lest you walk into her with your need._

_Her hand traces the line of your jaw, and you can’t help yourself anymore, butting your head against her chest with a whining mewling cry of a piteous puppy, and her fingers are combing through your fur, scratching in just the right way. She is laughing and it’s like sunlight has poured into your veins, like you are seeing the sun for the first time._

_“Good girl,” she is saying, and her delight smells like the first time you romped through grass, as you drop to the ground and roll over so she can rub you all over, getting her smell all over you and yours all over her, and for the first time in your long life you have sunk into bliss._

Ͼ

Every time Jupiter tried to stop petting the lycaon, she would scoot forward, all but climbing into her lap and licking her on the face like an over-eager dog. The lycaon was _massive_ – she stood with shoulders chest-high, and she was longer than Jupiter was tall. Her given name was Warlord, but it didn’t seem to fit her anymore; and Jupiter could tell (remember?) that she had been found as a lanky puppy, injured and starving to death. The two of them reached a compromise, with the lycaon’s head in her lap as she idly scratched behind her tall pointed ears.

It was easy to guess why the lycaon had been driven off. Unlike the other lycaons in the pens, she was a pale ruddy golden color, dark blonde in most of her fur, but paling to white in her tall mane and the long plumes of her tail. If being half-albino (again, whatever _that_ meant; as far as she could tell, Caine was just fair-skinned with blond hair. He had freckles, after all) had been enough of a detractor for Caine to be sold at a loss, then surely being of similar coloration would explain why her own family would have driven her off. Jupiter was pretty sure that happened with animals, sometimes. It was harder to explain why that might have happened with Caine, but, well. That was probably a trouble for another day.

As her train of thought trailed off, the reality of her situation came crashing back down. The lycaon whined and nuzzled her, trying to fit as much of her enormous body as would fit into Jupiter’s lap. Jupiter sighed and patted her on the shoulder.

“C’mon, lady,” she said, shifting her hips. “My legs are falling asleep.” The lycaon heaved a sigh so melodramatic that Jupiter had to laugh, even as she felt her gut tying itself into knots at the thought of what she was about to have to go with. Facing down a ship full of sargon was exactly the last thing in the world she wanted to do, but it had to be done. It couldn’t be worse than facing down Balem. She didn’t even have a plan of attack. She’d just do whatever felt right.

Both woman and beast groaned as they stood. Jupiter’s legs both were nearly asleep, and she stomped out the pins and needles for a moment. She could feel the two packs’ attentions shift her way, then dismiss them and return to their companionate behaviors. The lycaon leaned against her side, unable to contain her desire for physical contact. Jupiter smiled, and gave her a quick scratch under the chin before burying her fingers in the thick coarse mane, feeling the coiled power of the muscles beneath.

They walked back towards the command room like that, the lycaon taking slow steps to every one of Jupiter’s strides. They might have gotten lost, but that the lycaon’s sense of smell was so keen; through the nose of the space wolf, Jupiter followed the smell of Song Latran.

The only encountered one person: Jack Aureus, who was heading back towards the lycaon catwalks with determined strides, obviously sent to check up on her. He tripped on the air at the sight of them, managing to keep from smacking dead into the floor only by a series of staggering steps and a conveniently-placed railing.

“Who – what –” His voice was choked, mouth half-open, and blue eyes wide with shock. Jupiter kept her poker face with a supreme act of will, but the lycaon could smell the warm flush of her amusement, and cocked an ear towards her, keeping the other on Jack. No doubt the lycantant could smell it on her, too, but he had his dignity. Jupiter wouldn’t laugh at him. It _was_ an unexpected sight, her with the massive lycaon keeping pace with her.

“We reached an accord,” Jupiter said, as blandly as possible, and kept walking. Jack just stood there, mouth agape, as the two of them strode past. The lycaon’s tail was _wagging_ , head up and tongue lolling out with her own amusement. They walked right into the command room like that, and to Jupiter’s great delight the entire room fell silent almost at once.

The silence lasted a few heartbeats before Chicanery Night fainted dead away, to be caught by a very surprised gunner. Naria Latran staggered back and sat down, hard, on one of the swiveling stools in front of the control panel. His jaw worked for a moment before he gasped out, “bitch,” then clapped a hand to his mouth with a sideways glance at Song.

If he was afraid of a reprimand, it would be long in coming: Song was staring at Jupiter and the lycaon with her mouth open in a mirror of Jack, who had trailed in and managed to get his mouth closed. Jupiter bared a grin, neither sure nor caring how much of the quiet laughter curling through her chest was hers or her lycaon’s.

“Close your mouth, or something might buzz in,” Jupiter said, with a false helpful tone. She could remember her mom snapping that at her the first few times they’d gone to houses to clean, the mansions and sprawling yards so opulent she could not help but gape. The lycaon’s tail wagged a little harder; Song’s brows shot up, but she closed her mouth, licking her lips twice.

“You – how – Warlord –” The words came out choppy, but the gist was obvious. Jupiter shook her head.

“Io,” she said. Song’s head canted to the side. Behind her, Kiza had managed to revive Chicanery, to the obvious relief of the gunner, who released Jupiter’s seneschal as quickly as possible.

“What?”

“Io,” Jupiter repeated. “It’s her name. Or isn’t it obvious that she’s staying with me, now?” Song’s eyes narrowed, but the lycantant did not reply right away. Jupiter met her eyes, stare for stare, and felt herself leaning forward onto the balls of her feet, as if that might give her some more height on the massive lycantant.

She’d failed Caine. She could see it now, spun out before her like a tale. He was bonded to the Legion, she’d _let_ him accept that bond, not understanding that every time he mentioned it to her, he was offering her a choice.

She’d failed her family. They were down there, planetside, ignorant. If she died out here, they had nobody to protect them. They had to be told, and allowed to make a choice, and she hadn’t done the telling. She’d had her chances. Lying was easier. Lying was comfortable, a cover-up for hard decisions and hard feelings, and her she was, with lies circling lies. She was done with it.

She’d failed her inheritance. Her, of all people, an illegal immigrant who cleaned toilets, had been given everything, _everything!_ It came with costs, horrible ones, and duties, and responsibility. Somewhere along the way, she’d strayed from her good intentions, and here she was, mired in desires that tugged her every which way.

She wasn’t going to fail this lycaon, who’d had such a shit deal her whole life, and had found in her a sister-in-soul.

And, well. She loved dogs. She’d always loved dogs. What was one, enormous, wolf-like lycaon, who obviously adored Jupiter with every fiber of her being?

Song dropped her chin. Was she smiling? Jupiter didn’t spend the time looking, wheeling on her heel to walk out of the room.

“Hail the sargorn flagship and prepare for boarding. I require an escort. And, um,” Jupiter paused, and glanced back at Kiza, who gave her a thumbs-up. Chicanery looked paler than usual, but he was sitting up and appeared otherwise none the worse for wear. “I need someone to show me where to go.”

There was a flurry of activity behind her, and Jupiter swept off.

Ͼ

“Don’t look at me,” Kiza said, when Chicanery gave her a dark look. “She thought that one up all on her own.” Song’s barking laugh rang out through the ship, and even Naria smiled.

Ͼ

Jupiter and Io were alone in the docking bay, Jack having taken them there and left, and her escort apparently en route. The lycaon rumbled, a low and friendly sort of growl. Jupiter groaned and leaned on Io, who was only too happy to support her weight. She was just… tired. It had been an early morning, and full of frenetic activity and wringing emotions. She didn’t have that much left in her for the day, and it was only, what? 10 am? Earlier.

“God, how am I going to survive the day,” she mumbled to herself, half-draping herself across the lycaon. Nobody was there to see her, after all.

“If your majesty does not mind, could she step back approximately ten Earth Imperial units?” came a polite voice. Jupiter jerked upright and looked around, seeing only what was there before: the stark walls of the docking bay, marked by a few dark grates and pipes.

“Who’s there?” she called out. Her voice quavered, and she grimaced. So much for Queen Jupiter. It was a persona she was only really just getting used to wearing.

“My pardon,” the voice said. “This voice is the auditory communication channel for this ship. I did not intend to startle your majesty, but she is standing in a hazardous zone for bay door opening.”

“Ah,” Jupiter said, plastering a polite smile on her face and backing up fifteen feet. “Better?”

“Thank you, your majesty,” the voice said. Jupiter held her stiff smile as the floor thrummed with vibration and the floor she had just been standing on dissolved into the golden sparking gleam of a grav-beam.

Ͼ

They – Jupiter, Io, her four legionnaires, and four others – stepped into golden space and descended into the massive docking bay of the sargorn flagship. The staggering scale of the ships hadn’t been apparent before. Hanging in the silken black of the void, they could have been any size, nearly black themselves, with floating wings of solar arrays. They could have been insects or homes or ships.

What Jupiter hadn’t realized was that they were cities.

Below her, on the wide platform below the Legion ship, were the forms of dozens of sargorn. Jupiter looked out across them, trying not to feel the vertigo of hanging in the sky. She tried to remember instead the wonder of staring across Chicago at night in the arms of the handsome stranger who had saved her life and would again.

Her feet touched the ground, and the sargorn dropped to their knees.

She stepped forward, and Io stepped out beside her. Her escort fanned out behind her, four hers and four a pack, and for the first time in a long time, something felt _right_.

Their genes might have been the same, yet she wasn’t Seraphi Abrasax. Her temper was not the famous Abrasax temper, but the sharp furor of a Bolotnikov. She was no one’s damn mother.

But she was a queen.

Reaching out to forgive the faces that had looked up without mercy as her family was used as bait and torment was a task too difficult for her. Never mind that part of her knew that those faces were dead – killed by Caine, killed in the wreckage of Balem’s hubris. Every sargorn had writ across their alien features that guilt.

So she reached out to their children, stepping around the kneeling sargorn to her two daughters, getting on one knee to look them in the eyes. Io stayed and stared the mother down, lycaon yellow eyes meeting sargorn gold.

“What’s your name?” Jupiter asked, as gentle as she could, holding out one hand in supplication. They were frightened, as frightened as she was, but they were _children_ , and something in her could forgive them for the sins of their parents. The young girls shuffled their wings, ducking chins in tandem and all but trying to hide themselves under their mother’s wings. Jupiter could hear the shuddering breathing of their mother, the caught breath almost a sob, and for the first time felt true compassion for the creature.

“Kakhet,” one said. The other hunched her shoulders further and shook her head, screening her face behind her wings. Kakhet took her sister’s hand and reached out the other to lay her taloned fingers across Jupiter’s skin. “She’s Galikkan,” she offered, when Jupiter closed her fingers around the sargorn’s small hand.

“Hello, Galikkan,” Jupiter said, her throat tight with memory. “My name is Jupiter Jones. I’m here to help you.”

After that, the decision was easy.

Ͼ

Bonding the entire sargorn species was less expensive than Jupiter expected, and mostly involved the waiving of debt in return for service, and the reparation of court fees.

The yearly expenses, taxes and fees included, came to just under 3% of her yearly gross income, which, according to Chicanery was “middling expensive, but worthwhile for the product rendered.”

Kiza’s laugh when Jupiter rolled her eyes almost made up for the mountain of paperwork.

Ͼ

They had a late lunch outside, in the clean warm air of a remote Pacific island. Chicago was dreary, sleeting, and Jupiter wanted to be away from it all. Jupiter and Kiza sipped their coconut drinks in hammocks strung between palm trees while Io ran through the surf, baying a laughing sing-song howl to the cloud-dappled sky. The morning sun was painting the sky in pastel colors, and Jupiter closed her eyes to bask, spinning ideas through her mind.

“If you could have anything,” she asked, “Anything at all, what would it be?” Jupiter looked over at Kiza, who raised a single eyebrow. Jupiter shrugged in return. “I mean it,” she pursued. “I’m going to ask Chicanery, too. I want to do this whole queen thing right. Or,” she added, pursing her lips, “at least better than I’ve been doing.”

“I already have what I want,” Kiza said. Jupiter gave her a _look_ , and she laughed, brandishing her drink. “Seriously!” she said. “I love taking care of the bees, and tinkering with projects, and learning new things. Dad always wanted something more for me, like he’d done me some sort of disservice by getting clipped for Caine.” Jupiter took a sip of her drink and twirled her fingers. Go on, go on. Kiza, well in-tune with Jupiter’s body language by now, giggled and sipped her own drink.

“I’ve never had big dreams,” she continued at last. “Mine were always small. I just wanted a family, a quiet life. They spliced me to be a pilot, but…” The corner of her mouth pulled back, sour. “I hate flying, and fighting bores me. Dad and Caine, they love what they were made for.” Kiza shook her head, and lay back in her hammock, one leg swinging over the edge and her drink resting on her navel. “The happiest day of my life was when dad bought me, but I think the second happiest was when dad brought me to Illinois.”

Jupiter snorted at that, but smiled. She rolled over to regard her friend, setting her drink down in the sand. Kiza looked over, sidelong.

“You’re good at what you do,” Jupiter said. “I was gonna ask you if you’d like me to retain you as a personal assistant, pay you to do all the things you do now, but if you’re happy with the status quo –” Jupiter shrieked and scrambled out of her hammock as Kiza launched at her and tackled to the ground, laughing and saying all sorts of things about how Jupiter was a _horrible person_ and _absolutely the worst_ and _the best friend ever._ Io couldn’t handle being left out of the pile and started nosing through them, well-nigh 500 pounds of soaking wet dog, all legs and saltwater and huge wet licks. Groaning and scolding, Jupiter and Kiza managed to disentangle themselves from each other and the lycaon, who promptly flopped down into the sand, tongue lolling out in delight.

“You’re gonna have to bathe that thing,” Kiza said, laughing.

“Psh, I don’t know,” Jupiter shot back with a grin. “Maybe I can con Chicanery into doing it.” They managed to hold their serious faces for maybe four seconds before dissolving into laughter, which left Io barking and rolling onto her back for attention, wriggling and huffing until Jupiter gave her the belly rub she so clearly deserved.

Ͼ

High overhead, Song Latran stood and stared down at the vibrant body of the Earth, the most treasured possession of the late and living Seraphi Abrasax. Her sister sat at her feet, leaning against her legs with the ease of long companionship. They rested in comfortable silence for a long time, breathing in the same rhythm, eyes watching the glowing planet far below them

“She’s quite a woman,” Coy said at last. “I almost wish I could have been there to see her walk in with Warlord by her side.” Song snorted, and ruffled her sister’s hair.

“I saw that bitch take down a full squadron on her own and come back flanks bleeding, ready for more,” Song said, shaking her head. “I thought for sure someone was going to die.” Coy chuckled, a low rumble more lycaon than human. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Jack so pale.”

“What’s your next move with her majesty, then?” Coy asked, glancing up from the planet to the dark face of her sister. “This throws it all off, no?”

“Hmph,” Song snorted, squatting down and sitting next to Coy, leaning her head on Coy’s shoulder. Coy gently scratched her scalp, earning a happy hum from Song. “Lady Seraphi’s different than we expected. I want done and away from this planet, before something even more unsettling happens.” She sighed, closing her eyes. “But we’ve a debt to repay, and it’s one that I’m still inclined to clear.”

“Hah, yeah.” Coy kissed Song’s crown and looked back down at the planet. Her voice grew more pensive, the memory of near-loss was still hard to face, some two decades later. “Apini could have claimed much more from us, for what he did. I don’t think I would have survived your loss.” Song sighed and sat up, taking Coy’s hand.

“Wise found the slavers, Apini broke them, Mellifer brought us together,” Song said. It carried the air of ritual, a bond that had been spoken aloud so many times it was memory.

“And Apini held us together,” Coy finished. She leaned over and kissed her sister again, on the cheek. Song leaned into it. “It’s a debt worth paying forward,” she said, gentle. Song closed her eyes.

“I know,” she said, so quiet as to almost be inaudible. “I just – it was easier to say I could show her my soul before she stepped out from under my shadow and stretched out her hands to grasp the hilt of the sword in her heart.”

“I could do it,” Coy started. Song shook her head, but smiled.

“No, I was the one who was caught, who got snared and who fell in love without you by my side. It has to be me.” Coy leaned her forehead against Song’s.

“We found tain together,” she reminded her sister. Song smiled again, deeper, truer.

“Yes,” she said, and kissed Coy on the forehead. “But it still has to be me.”


	5. INTERLUDE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I posted two chapters at once this time - Don't miss chapter 4!

“What, really? All ten thousand of them?” Kalique gave her majordomo a look, as if he might have gotten his facts wrong. Malidictes inclined his head, as formal a nod as might be asked. She made a little _hm_ of surprise, and started walking again. Her ladies-in-waiting trailed behind her, the younger daughters of lesser houses, and one from a secondary of House Abrasax who was getting a little too interested in the internal affairs of the House. “A bold move.”

“She appears to be moving into the public sphere, my lady,” Malidictes offered. “Though we do not as yet have any solid information from her household.”

Kalique smirked, a sly twist of her lips. “I doubt my brother does, either, though,” she pointed out, plucking a delicacy from a servant’s platter as she passed. Her routes were planned far in advance by the alcazar AI, and while a surprise to her – the subtle guides led her without any advance cues – her servants were well-prepared for her passing.

“Lord Titus is fending off creditors,” Malidictes said, his feathers ruffling in amusement. Kalique’s smile grew, just a fraction, and she made a non-committal noise that might have been interpreted either as sympathy or amusement. Her ladies-in-waiting would have nothing untoward to report; after all, this “daily briefing” was more a show than anything else. Anything important was handled far in advance, when no rumors could fly on faster-than-light wings to lodge where they weren’t desired.

Balem might have had mother’s head for business, and Titus her talent for emotional manipulation, but Kalique had been designed as the socialite, and her network of pretty little rumormongers was far better than all of the rat’s spies rolled together.

Ͼ

It was a simple enough mission, the kind he’d been on so many times before. He’d been given a scent and a task and supplies, and off he went, a hound on the hunt.

The scent was familiar. He’d encountered it four times before:

(1) On Tahini IV, in the back room where they’d held the girls before taking them to their breakers. He’d smelled of power and the sick-sweet smell of royal blood, and he could almost see his disdain of compassion and the clean-cut lines of the valencian wool-blend suit he’d worn.

(2) In the wreckage of the _Vain Triumph_ , in his sweat and fear, where he’d portalled into one of the worst gang wars in the past millennium and nearly lost his filthy life for the mistake.

(3) Faintly, on the cold skin of a murdered girl, her body broken beyond repair and all hope of sunrise lost from her face.

(4) In the warrens of the station he had tracked a slaver to, his quarter reeking of money and false pheromones and the heady stench of fear and sex. He’d raped a girl there, or more than one, and the miasma of those rooms had laid on Caine’s skin like a layer of soot that could not be scrubbed off.

They’d never sent him to kill a royal before.

Ͼ

Chicanery Wistar Night lay draped across the couch in a state of severe undress: white hair unbound and tangled in his lover’s fingers, the pale skin of his chest bare, with only the lightest trail of pale fur leading down into his black boxer-briefs, long legs bare and curled up. He looked up and smiled, a bright and relaxed expression so rarely at home on his narrow aristocratic features.

“I should really get back to work,” he said, not moving. The android he lay on laughed and stroked his hair, coming through the coarse strands with adoring gentleness. Chicanery closed his eyes, the smile settling into place.

“I don’t think you want to go back to work,” Legal Advocate Gregory (Model OR-2456A) said, his voice teasing. Perfect painted lips pulled back into a smile, and the fine gears behind his detailed face whirred as he looked down at his lover.

“No,” Chicanery replied, half-sigh. “I’m getting too old to be seneschal for an Abrasax.” He turned and buried his face in Gregory’s lap, as if hiding from the world. “It’s going to be the death of me.”

“Seneschal is a deprecated position,” Gregory said with a laugh. “You ought to tell her majesty so.” Chicanery laughed once, a little nasal hmph!, and rolled back over to look up at his lover again.

“After I begged her to bond me for it?” he said. He shook his head. “That strikes me as a bad idea. She’s done a lot of forgiving already.”

Gregory shrugged with one shoulder, and leaned down to kiss Chicanery. The spliced sighed up into the contact, loving the cool touch of skin against synthskin, and the gentle way Gregory nibbled at his mouth. The android pulled back after a moment, smiling down with such love and affection that Chicanery was unable to resist smiling back. “Jupiter Jones is no Seraphi Abrasax,” Gregory pointed out.

“Still,” Chicanery said, “It seems foolish.”

Gregory shook his head. “I don’t have the functions to cry at your funeral, you know.” Chicanery laughed again, and pushed himself upright.

“Then maybe you should make use of me while I’m still among the living,” he said, with a simpering smirk.

The robot laughed, and did.

Ͼ

Jupiter told Aleksa first.

They went out together, for some “mom-daughter bonding time.” Everyone teased them about it, but Aleksa was so charmed that Jupiter wanted to spend one-on-one time with her that it was all in good nature. Jupiter took her mother to a little coffee shop to tell the story. It had all been planned in advance, of course; the shop was a completely fabricated front, staffed by her people. Luckily Aleksa always ordered the same thing – dark roast, black – so Jupiter didn’t have to discover what level in barista legionnares had. She suspected it would have been a disaster.

Her mother didn’t believe her, of course, not until they walked out to the back, where a bonafide space ship awaited them.

Standing above the earth, Jupiter turned to her mother and offered a smile that was more of a wince.

“Я говорил тебе?” she said. I told you? Aleksa shook her head, and looked away from the sight of the Earth suspended in the black velvet sky.

“Я не хочу знать.” I didn’t want to know. Jupiter watched her mother, trying not to cry.

“You deserved to know,” Jupiter said, trying to explain. Aleksa looked back, her smile pained.

“Oh, Jupiter,” she said, coming over to cup her daughter’s face with both hands. “Моя планета. What a world you have been thrown into. But I am too old. I cannot do this.” Jupiter swallowed, tried to smile.

“I just didn’t want to lie to you anymore,” she said, voice trailing away. Aleksa kissed her, and pulled her in close for a hug. Jupiter clung to her mother, tears stinging her eyes.

“And now you are not. Oh my dear, my dear daughter.” She pulled back and held Jupiter at arms-length, by the shoulders. “That Caine! Is he from space, Jupiter?”

“Yes, мама,” Jupiter said, as meek as a dormouse. “He’s an alien.”

Aleksa shook her head. “Я не хочу знать что,” she muttered.

And when the time came to choose, Aleksa chose to forget.

Ͼ

Caine tracked in the black. He always had, with no communications until his quarry had been found and his task carried out.

It had never been a problem for him before. But now, some stupid hope kept curling up out of the soft part of his core, that Jupiter would break every rule and protocol, and that she would find some way to contact him. Just one word would be enough, he thought, as he hoped for some message to appear out of the black.

It was so stupid, he thought. Of course she wouldn’t do that. Not only would it put his task in jeopardy, it would put his life at risk. He didn’t know why he wanted it. He could barely recognize _that_ he wanted it, but oh gods, he knew he wanted it.

From the rings of Kalemnion to the shipyards of Neramie, through the dark alleys of the cities of Yiskal V to the great planet-city Tahini IV, he tried to put her out of his heart. He knew she was fond of him, and he could smell her desire for him when she gazed at him with those sloe eyes. But he knew, too, that she didn’t want him, and that she wouldn’t claim him. She’d had every opportunity. He’d all but lay his head on her feet and begged her to purchase him, but she wouldn’t.

She didn’t want to own him.

She didn’t want to own _anyone_ , she said, and maybe that made it okay.

Maybe that was why it hurt so much to find the legal notes with a photo of her. It was an old photo, taken at some point during their hours on Orous, and he had been carefully erased from it, along with every other indication of where she was. But it was her, and it was a notification of the purchase of the sargorn nation. The woman who had told him that she didn’t want to own anyone, owned thousands, and had purchased them within 75 hours of the ruling that they were free agents.

It was the floor in his shoddily-crafted world caving in, termites crawling out of the broken boards and lodging under his skin.

She didn’t want to own him.

She didn’t want _him_.

Maybe it was that dark pit of despair that made him slip up. Maybe it was just that he was far from home, a lycantant who had lost its pack, and that he was tired. Maybe it was just a mistake, stochasticity catching the perfect hunter by surprise.

He smelled the ambush, and sprung it as he had so many times before, but he hadn’t smelled the sniper. Had they been downwind? Had he been so caught up in the scuttling feelings he had no names for that he had made such a stupid error?

He clawed for life, but as the burning heat of the tranquilizer made his muscles go slack and the world slide away from him into gray fog, all he could see was her face, and him erased.


	6. Stepping Up

With the crew of the _Silver Eyes_ preoccupied with planetside training and maneuvers for three solid days, Jupiter had time on her hands – time to grit her teeth, to confess her secrets, and to make decisions. She had thought it would be hard, if her family rejected the truth, but harder still was lying through her teeth. And then, when what she thought would be the worst had happened – when Aleksa closed her eyes and forgot – it wasn’t so bad, after all. Her mother had chosen trust, and protection, and Jupiter could step into being the shield for her family without any further regrets.

Besides, she thought, Aunt Nino loved knowing, and seeing the sparkle of that secret in her eyes across the dinner table, and hearing murmured promises that they’d just have to ease Aleksa in, and it would just be a happy surprise, in the end… well, that was worth far more than any space inheritance ever could be.

Jupiter worried the end of a ballpoint pen with her teeth until Kiza scolded her again. Very deliberately, Jupiter put the back of the pen between her molars and ground it around, producing an array of muffled crunches and squeaks. At her feet, Io heaved what could only be a longsuffering sigh, and stretched out even further. It was like having a small horse in the house. The lycaon could sprawl a solid ten feet if she so chose, limbs stretched fore and aft, and long plumed tail spread across the floor. Woe betide the unwary foot that dared to trod upon her glorious self. She was a warhound, and knew it in her bones.

Ͼ

On Monday morning, Jupiter had a meeting with Chicanery. A _real_ meeting, with Kiza acting as secretary and some sort of weird floating sphere apparently recording 360-degree video. (It was, Jupiter told Kiza later, ostentatious and ridiculous. Personal Assistant Kiza, unflappable, told her that it was the absolute minimum for a meeting, and wouldn’t she want there to be some sort of record to go to a millennium from now? Jupiter’s protests, that she would never be using dead people eternity baths, was met only by a series of “mhm” and “whatever you say, your majesty.”)

Chicanery, perhaps used to the sorts of meetings Lord Balem had been fond of calling, (where apparently there was a recitation of important data, followed by some bowing and scraping, and immediate obeisance), had prepared a recitation of important facts for his queen. Jupiter interrupted his recital about halfway through, with as apologetic an expression as she could manage, after being bombarded with a lot of words she didn’t understand and information she felt she should care about, but really didn’t.

“Um, okay, so,” she said. “This is… a lot. Just, a lot. What is it that a seneschal actually _does_ , if you don’t mind me asking? Surely you’re not doing all of this yourself?” The rat splice blinked. His throat worked, and he set down the sheave he’d been referring to.

“Seneschal is a deprecated position,” he said, sidling.

Jupiter raised one brow, and tilted her head. “Didn’t you ask me to bond you as seneschal?”

He winced. “Ah, yes, your majesty.” Chicanery looked down at his lap, as if he might find the answers somewhere among his figures for mining production and legal progress. “It seemed… simplest. But if your majesty is planning on entering the public sphere-“

“-which she is,” Kiza added,

“-then you will need something rather more than, ah, one splice to run your affairs.” He blushed under his powder and blush, the tips of his ears turning a flaming crimson, and color rising even under his collar. A true albino, his complexion his nothing of his feelings, when they were strong enough to break out from under his diplomatic control. “A seneschal is a common position in the lesser Houses, where there is, ah, not enough intrigue or business to require both a majordomo and steward.”

Jupiter sighed. “I don’t really know the difference between any of those,” she said. “So I can’t really make a decision here. Remember that I’m, like, the barbarian queen, right? Tersie and everything. Five-year-old words.” Chicanery looked pained at the reminder, and Jupiter bared a grin at him. “Ah, come on, it’s not that bad,” she teased.

“Far be it from me to disagree with your majesty,” (“of course not,” muttered Kiza. Jupiter kicked her under the table. Chicanery shot the girl a venomous look.) “But  I am not accustomed to speaking to children.” Kiza was snickering, and the splice turned to her with a sharp smile. “Perhaps your assistant might be so kind…?” Jupiter raised a brow at Kiza.

“Seneschals do, oh, everything,” Kiza said. “Oversee the staff, process reports, plan social events, do the dirty work for their bosses.” At Jupiter’s questioning sound, she added, “You know, spying and things. Illegal things. They’re considered loyal until death, or after death, usually. The sins of an Entitled often roost on their seneschals.”

“So, why did you come to me, then?” Jupiter asked Chicanery. It was something she’d been curious about before. Why _would_ Balem’s… whatever… want to work for the woman he’d tried to kill, or at least tried to capture? There was bad blood there, and not just between her and the splice, but apparently between Caine and him, too. She’d only really agreed after Stinger and Caine had pronounced him _“trustworthy enough, for a rat_ ”, and then only because she really needed someone to help manage her affairs, and didn’t know who else to turn to.

When her seneschal looked disinclined to comment, Kiza cut in. “Well, he’d probably have been thrown in jail and ignored until the circumstances of your kidnapping and Balem’s death were verified.” She shrugged. “He’d probably have been executed for it, but not before spending years in prison.”

“Ah,” Jupiter said. What more was there to say? She felt a little bit more of the pity that had pushed her into accepting Chicanery Night in the first place. Jupiter Jones, collector of strays. “So, um, what about majordomos and stewards?”

Kiza shrugged again. “Majordomos are in charge of the personal side. They manage households, social events, guards, et cetera. Stewards do business, generally.”

Jupiter turned to Chicanery again. He looked abashed, or as abashed as a self-assured creature could be. “Well, Mr. Night,” she said with a smile, “What is it that you want me to do?”

Ͼ

Portalling took time – but not much. Monday afternoon saw Jupiter staring out the window of her ship, watching the approach of the massive gas giant Naraka III. It was hard to stare into space without remembering Caine. He was out there, somewhere. Was he watching stars sitting still in the void, or the slow swirl of gossamer rings as his ship glided into port? Or was he planetside, hunting, tracking, killing?

(The thought that he might be the one in danger didn’t exactly not occur to her. It was more like she very carefully kept from thinking about the possibility. If she thought about it, it might _happen_ , and she didn’t think she could survive any more without him there. And when had that happened?)

Jupiter sighed. She missed him. It wasn’t like missing her other boyfriends (and she’d had a few). And it wasn’t just that he was the sexiest thing in space leather (though he was). He was just… ugh. He was gentle, respectful, and _dangerous_ , in the tame-only-to-her-hand way that every romance novel and chick-flick movie played up. He was smart, with a sardonic wit that unfurled unexpectedly, and when she was with him, she could just be plain old Jupiter, who used maxi pads as wound dressings and occasionally (okay, usually) said exactly the wrong thing with at exactly the wrong time.

And he was _hers_.

The moon was hers, too, but in a different sort of way. Its name was Heliocane, and don’t think that the irony of _that_ name was lost on her. It was a wild and desolate place, full of sweeping deserts and sweeping prairies and great sweeping thunderclouds. It was a place as swept up in the whirl of planets as she was, and with the strangest sense of _I remember this place_ Jupiter stepped off of the deck of her ship ( _Seraphi’s ship_ ) into her alcazar ( _Seraphi’s alcazar_ ). The sense of déjà vu accompanied her as the skimmer lifted off again, leaving her to stand alone with Io on the windswept mesa, the grasses sighing and the breeze ruffling the dense pale fur of the lycaon.

According to Chicanery, the alcazar was fully staffed, in keeping with Seraphi’s will and estate, but the only thing there to greet her was a hovering orb. It was a dull grey color, the velvety color of a well-worn gun. Jupiter put out her hand, and the orb floated over. It thrummed, a low throbbing hum almost at the edge of hearing. It made her bones vibrate.

“Um, hello, orb,” Jupiter said. “How are you?” To her surprise, the orb thrummed slightly louder, and dropped down to briefly rest against the tips of her outstretched fingers.

“Hello, your majesty,” it said.

“Jupiter,” she corrected, out of habit more than anything. It talked? Of course it talked. Why _wouldn’t_ it talk?

“Yes,” the orb said. “I apologize for not having a more appropriate form available at such short notice, your majesty. I am the house intelligence for this alcazar. Your own design,” it added, sounding almost… worried? Could computer programs, even really sophisticated ones, worry? Then Jupiter remembered Advocate Bob, and just how expressive he seemed – was – and felt a bit ashamed. “I hope the alcazar meets with your pleasure still, after so long.”

“It’s beautiful,” Jupiter said, and meant it. It didn’t look nearly as large as Kalique’s, but it was easy to see where Seraphi’s daughter had drawn her inspiration from. The building grew down into the mesa, with carved pathways and balconies visible from approach. The great flat top of the mesa had been left almost bare, save for a massive roofed gazebo covering a long spiral staircase down into the heart of the building. Or carving. Whatever.

“You are here, though, to meet with Ms. Nicohora, though, are you not?” Did it sound sad? It was hard to tell, what with the fact that the orb lacked even the most rudimentary of facial expressions. Jupiter tried to offer it a reassuring smile.

“I’ll come back,” she promised, and found to her own surprise that she meant it. “I’d like to get to know this place. And, um, you?” Jupiter paused, and Io whined, low in her throat. She rested one hand on the head of the lycaon, and felt her relax. “Do you have a name?”

The orb whirred. “You never gave me one, your majesty,” it demurred. “I have always merely been ‘alcazar.’ If you will follow me?” Without another sound, the orb floated off, heading for the gazebo. Jupiter shook her head.

“Bossy little thing,” she muttered, feeling rather pleased. It was nice to encounter someone she didn’t have to break of bowing and scraping to her, even (especially?) if that someone was an artificial intelligence Seraphi herself had designed. It was good to know, too, that her putative former self had been more than an amoral people harvester. It was easier to believe the proof of her eyes than the sweet taste of Titus’ lies, in the end.

Ͼ

The alcazar was as beautiful on the inside as it was on the outside. Water dripped down the inside wall of the hallway the orb led her down, giving the air a verdant moisture, catching in carved pools and nourishing thick ferns, mosses, and lichens growing in and around niches. The water fed into a narrow stream running along the side of the path, in which the slim forms of fishes flashed in the light. Jupiter recognized things that looked like minnows and things that looked like the little skimmer-bugs found on any pond.

(Had they been memories of Earth, brought here? Or the other way around?)

The outer wall of the hallway was a series of carved arches, opening out onto the vista of the desert-prairie of Heliocane. A small lizard-like creature chirruped at her, clinging to one of the pillars. It fanned gleaming cupric wings with scales like feathers before leaping out into the air, wending its way around and through the arches as it passed. Io snapped at it when it came too close, and with a shriek of outrage, it spun away and dropped down, out of sight.

Jupiter scolded the lycaon, but her heart wasn’t in it, particularly as the great beast looked immediately contrite. If they hadn’t been walking, she would have been groveling. Jupiter paused and crouched to soothe Io, who whined quietly before licking her on the neck, once, in contrition.

_He’d made one comment too far, suggested that you weren’t doing your duty, and you’d snapped at him, tired already from early mornings and toilets that needed scrubbing. He was silent for hours, and when you kiss him in apology, he moans into it, leans into you, kisses your mouth, your cheek, your neck. His tongue runs along the pulse in your neck, hot and sweet, and when you jerk from the power of that touch, he falls back, murmuring apologies._

The orb whirred, and when that was ignored, chimed. Jupiter jumped to her feet, brushing lycaon-hair off of her black shirt and black jacket. She needed a new color scheme. But who had time to hire a personal designer when they had things like entire species of dinosaur people knocking down their door, or secretly overworked seneschals who were desperate for help? Besides, Jupiter thought, full of virtue and covered in dog hair, she liked the Aegis jacket. And this way she and Caine matched!

“Her Majesty Jupiter Jones, the authentic Recurrence of Lady Seraphi Abrasax, and Sovereign of House Abrasax,” the orb announced as Jupiter turned into the room. Jupiter tried her best not to make a face, but she lost the battle with laughter when the orb added, “Ahem. And her companion, Warlord Io, isabelline lycaon and bonded warhound.” To her relief, the stern steel-haired woman in the room cracked a smile as well. The three splices behind her appeared unruffled, and the orb bustled off.

Jupiter took the only available seat, a floating fermionic couch hovering over a bed of mosses and ferns. The blue light bathed them in an eerie glow, and what looked something like moths fluttered, as if captivated by the gleam of the bench.

“You must be Ms. Nicohora,” she said, for lack of better introduction. “Thank you for meeting me on such short notice.”

The woman offered a slight smile. She was not beautiful, or even striking. She was the sort of plain person whose face would be forgotten. It was a face-shaped face, with flat eyebrows over unremarkable eyes. Her hair was iron grey and cut in the short style of those with thinning hair they would rather not have noticed. If Jupiter had seen her on the streets of Chicago, she might not have even noticed her. It occurred to Jupiter that this was perhaps by design.

“You may well find that any number of people will clear their schedules for you, your majesty,” Ms. Nicohora said. She did not offer a hand to shake or more than incline her head by way of a bow. “Particularly,” and here her voice went as dry as the deserts around them, “when your seneschal all but guarantees an immediate commission.”

Jupiter did make a face at that; Io finally determined that she was comfortable enough to sit, and did so at Jupiter’s side, crushing a collection of delicate blue-violet ferns with her ample warhound behind. Jupiter decided to ignore it. “My people approved of your splicing practices, and I am in need of immediate services,” she said to Ms. Nicohora, lifting her shoulders in what she hoped was a carefree shrug. “As you might imagine.”

The woman smiled again, that polite smile. “Indeed,” she said. “I have, as you can see, several splices that might suit your requirements. While you will of course want a bespoke majordomo, these things do take time.” Jupiter covered her immediate distaste for that notion with a polite smile of her own. Talking about people as if they were objects made her feel sick to her stomach. Beside her, Io’s long ruff started lifting, hair by hair, in response to the shift in Jupiter’s scent. Jupiter started stroking the lycaon to disguise the reaction. If ever there was a teacher for emotional control, having a giant space wolf displaying her emotions for the world to see was one for the books.

Ms. Nicohora appeared not to take notice, but Jupiter saw the nostrils of one of the splices flare. She bit her lower lip, caught herself, and returned her eyes to the splicer. “If you would, please inform me of their, ah, specifications.” It wasn’t a question, and Ms. Nicohora didn’t take it as such. In a voice with the familiar sing-song lilt and butter softness of a practiced salesman, she began to outline the genetic tendencies, expressed personalities, and personalized training of each of the splices. Jupiter listened, but let her eyes wander over each of the splices in turn. They looked, not at her, but at the wall, standing at attention just as if they were talked about as objects for purchase every day.

Perhaps they were.

The first was, to the naked eye, apparently fully human, though that was unlikely, given who she was dealing with. He was tan, with the golden sun-kissed glow of a man who worked outside. His body was slim and almost gawky, the sort of boy her Aunt Nino would fondly refer to as a noodle. His hair was dark auburn, and long. To Io, he smelled like a young buck desperate to prove himself, nervous, overeager, full of testosterone. He felt like the tension in her ligaments just before a leap.

The third was the dark grey-black of charcoal, totally hairless, and with full feminine curves that made Jupiter almost sigh with envy. She stared pointedly at the floor as her splicer described her as “naturally subservient, with a tendency towards independent service and perhaps overeager submission.” Her scent was sharp, the brittle cut-flower smell of a woman waiting to die.

Jupiter’s eyes kept falling on the one standing directly behind Ms. Nicohora. He reminded her of the sleepy heat of summer, and of the brilliant winged lizard that had flown with her for a moment, as she walked the open halls of the alcazar. He didn’t look anything like the lizard. He was as young as the others, with a round face and soft hands. His skin was the same sandstone-red as the jutting mesas of Heliocane, and looked as rough, marked with ridges and whorls that had nothing to do with the sharpness of the brand on his neck. Io stood and walked over to him before Jupiter could, and through her Jupiter could smell the sudden surge of adrenaline off the splicer under the hot yellow gaze of a warhound.

He looked up at her, and Jupiter smiled. “Would you like to work for me?” she asked. “They say I’m a barbarian queen, unfit for society, with no sense of what’s proper.”

“I know who you are.” His voice was soft. He smelled like cleaning felt: comfortable. Something she was good at. Something she could trust.

Jupiter waited. The splicer tried to speak, and Io showed one fang in warning.

“I think,” he said after a moment, “I would like the challenge.”

And Jupiter smiled.

Ͼ

“Um, one question,” Jupiter asked over paperwork. Ms. Nicohora’s brows raised. Jupiter gnawed her lip. “What _exactly_ does half-albino mean?”

Ͼ

The explanation was more complex than it had any right to be, but that’s what she got for asking a splicer.

Ͼ

Oh, did you want to know the answer? For the sake of posterity:

“You mean in relation to that infamous lycantant of yours, no? Everybody gets that wrong, save this clever alcazar of yours. Isabelline, he said, and that’s what it is. Lycaons come with a double-copy of an ur-melanin production pathway, nothing _you_ need to worry yourself about, your majesty, but part of the business for anyone splicing lycaon crosses. They need the full melanin pathway to develop, you see, and when you get a reversion mutation in one of the alleles of any of the seventeen genes in the cascade, you get a broadscale ur-melanin dilution. This sort of thing is called an isabelline mutation, and it makes an animal blond or pinkish. If you pair two copies, you get a full ur-melanin dilution. They’ll be cream or white, with blue or violet eyes. So a double-isabelline is nearly the same thing as an albino, but a different pathway, of course.

“Those that can’t be bothered learning genetics call isabellines half-albino. I suppose it’s some sort of a shorthand, lumping all the dilutions into one, though of course any animal with only one albino allele has a wild-type expression. You can't tell a true half-albino, they're simply carriers for the albino allele. An isabelline lycaon-based cross of any sort, however, is usually born the runt of the litter, and they need melanin supplements to survive to adulthood, at least in most cases. It’s generally considered a culling flaw pre-implantation, but not post. I’ve never heard of a double-isabelline surviving, but technology is a wonderful thing, your majesty. Who knows? It may have happened somewhere out there.”

Ͼ

Tuesday saw her in the fields with the Legionnaires, joining for some basic training exercises with the lycaon handlers. Song and her sister made themselves scarce; all Jupiter saw of Song was a brief glance and a casual wave before the lycantant flicked on the cloaking of her flying motorcycle thing. Somehow, that made Jupiter both jealous and nervous to be flying around in her space roller blade boots.

Gold Aureus had been Io’s former handler, and so he was assigned to help Jupiter learn to work with her warhound. The lycaon greeting him with a strange churring woof, which he returned, but she didn’t leave Jupiter’s side. Gold was as unphased by this as he was by everything else during the day, from Jupiter nearly causing a head-on collision of two packs of lycantants, to Jupiter nearly colliding with an invisible flying motorcycle, to Jupiter actually colliding with one of the lycantants – namely, him.

Afterwards, in the farmhouse kitched, they sipped lemonade sweetened with honey while Io sprawled across their feet, panting the happy, loose-tongue pant of a well-exercised canine. Gold looked as relaxed and at-ease as he had all day, with his lycaon-yellow eyes half-closed with the pleasure of a good run and his lips curved in a natural smile. Jupiter watched him out of the corner of her eye, and frowned as she finally realized what was bothering her.

“You’re no bigger than Caine!” Her voice came out rather more accusatory than she had intended, but Gold didn’t seem offended, or even remotely contrite. He raised one dark eyebrow and regarded her with those sharp yellow eyes.

“Of course not,” he said with a languid smile. “It’s only the lycantant women who get so tall. Or did you think I might be Song’s sister?”

Jupiter sputtered. “He- he’s supposed to be a runt! I thought- I thought…” She stopped to consider what she actually had thought. Her impression of Song and Coy had been overwhelming, and though she’d seen the male lycantants with the sisters, she’d been, well, distracted at the time, by Song and sargons and sacrifice. “I think that perhaps I have been a little bit stupid,” she said at last.

Ͼ

And finally Wednesday came, and she stepped into a small room in the _Silver Eyes_ , and then all the time in the world was gone, and for the first and last time, she was a lycantant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I intended to get to the meat of this thing in this chapter... but I guess it will have to wait for the next chapter! Mea culpa.


End file.
